On Noël Carroll on narrative closure

This paper examines various claims by Noël Carroll about narrative closure and its relationship to narrative connections, which are, roughly, causal connections generously conceived to include necessary conditions for sufficient conditions for an effect. I propose supplementing the expanded notion of a cause with Michael Bratman’s notion of a psychological connection to account for the particular role that human agents play in narratives. A novel and a film are used as examples to illustrate how the concept of a psychological connection eliminates the need for Carroll's condition that narratives must be globally forward-looking.     

Closure of autobiographical memories moderates their directive effect on behaviour

Specific autobiographical memories have been theorised to serve a directive function, whereby the content of the memory directs behaviour outside awareness. The present research tested whether the extent to which a memory feels low in closure, or psychologically not in the past, moderates this directive effect. A total of 163 participants in an online experiment were asked to recollect a specific autobiographical memory of a time they had failed to donate to charity, or were not asked to recollect a memory. Those who recollected a memory were randomly assigned to think of the memory as high versus low in closure. Recollecting an autobiographical memory made to feel low in closure led to more memory-relevant behaviour than either recollecting a memory made to feel high in closure, or no memory at all. Moreover, the directive effect of a low-closure memory occurred whether participants were made aware of an upcoming behavioural opportunity or not. Discussion centres on possible processes linking low closure and behaviour, as well as implications for the self-memory system theory of autobiographical memory.