Down on the upside: redemption,contamination, and agency in the lives of adult children of alcoholics

We investigated differences in the nature and implications of Adult Children of Alcoholics (ACOAs; n?=?53) and non-ACOAs’ (n?=?80) narrative identities. Participants described six autobiographical narratives and completed measures of emotional functioning. Narratives were coded for redemptive (bad things turning good), contaminated (good things turning bad), and agentic (perceived control) imagery. ACOAs exhibited similar levels of redemptive and contaminated imagery, and lower levels of agency in their narratives, relative to non-ACOAs. In addition, themes of redemption, contamination, and agency corresponded divergently with emotional functioning. Among ACOAs, narrative redemption and agency were related to poorer emotional functioning whereas, among non-ACOAs, narrative contamination predicted poorer emotional functioning. These findings provide indication of the manner in which ACOAs story their lives. They also align with the emerging area of research noting that, among certain vulnerable populations, redemptive and agentic imagery serve as predictors of maladaptive functioning.     

Tomboyism or Lesbianism? Beyond Sex/Gender/Sexual Conflation

To illuminate questions of sex/gender/sexual conflation the researcher focused on the relationship between reported tomboyism and lesbianism. Narratives of childhood and adolescence were collected from 32 women who were grouped into four gender/sexual status combinations: “lesbian/bisexual butch,” “straight butch,” “lesbian/bisexual femme,” and “straight femme.” The effects of participants’ sexual and gendered statuses on their retrospective accounts of two aspects of tomboyism—“choosing masculinity” and “rejecting femininity”—were examined. Chi square and qualitative analyses suggest that stage in the life cycle, gender, and sexual status influence distinct mergings and separations of sex, gender, and sexuality in women’s retrospective reports. The researcher concludes that attention to sex, gender, and sexuality as both distinct and connected clarifies the relationship between tomboyism and lesbianism.Part of this paper was presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association in Atlanta, Georgia in 2003. Interview data for this study were originally collected for an unpublished dissertation (Carr, 2002).     

Maintaining stereotypes in communication: Investigating memory biases and coherence-seeking in storytelling

When communicating, a general tendency exists for people to transmit more stereotype consistent (SC) than inconsistent (SI) information. Although some communicative factors have been shown to play a role, it is still not yet known the extent to which general memory biases (i.e. independent of communicative context) contribute to this phenomenon. To examine this issue, and to explore further mechanisms of the bias, the present paper presents quantitative and qualitative data of an experiment involving the transmission of a stereotype-relevant story through 20 four-person chains using the method of serial reproduction. An SC bias emerged when participants had an intention to communicate but not when they reproduced the story from memory with no such intention. Results also suggest that trying to tell a coherent story may be one further factor that contributes to the bias. These and other findings were discussed in terms of the role of communicative processes in maintaining stereotypes.     

Does Narrative Feedback Enhance Children's Motor Learning in a Virtual Environment?

Augmented feedback has motivational and informational functions in motor learning, and is a key feature of practice in a virtual environment (VE). This study evaluated the impact of narrative (story-based) feedback as compared to standard feedback during practice of a novel task in a VE on typically developing children's motor learning, motivation and engagement. Thirty-eight children practiced navigating through a virtual path, receiving narrative or non-narrative feedback following each trial. All participants improved their performance on retention but not transfer, with no significant differences between groups. Self-reported engagement was associated with acquisition, retention and transfer for both groups. A narrative approach to feedback delivery did not offer an additive benefit; additional affective advantages of augmented feedback for motor learning in VEs should be explored.     

The Narrative Architecture of Political Forgiveness

Although there is widespread agreement with the argument that Hannah Arendt made more than half a century ago, that forgiveness is “one of the human faculties that make social change possible” (Misztal, 2011, p. 201), beyond this, there is little consensus of what it means. Applying a narrative structure to this discussion, there is a lack of clarity around questions of who, what, where, when, and why to forgive. This article will explore the politics of forgiveness in East Germany, where these issues have been hotly contested for more than 25 years. The data examined in this article suggest that the fraught process of forgiveness embodies not consensus but contest, as people disagree on key questions such as who has the right to forgive whom, for what, how long the window for the opportunity of forgiveness stays open, and even why these questions matter, not only for individuals but for the whole of society.     

Exasperations as Blessings: Meaning-Making and the Caregiving Experience

This study examines the process of how caregivers can shape the frustrations and exasperations of caring for a family member with Alzheimer's disease into blessings. Heidegger's hermeneutic phenomenological perspective is used to interpret a caregiver's narrative, in which she describes caring for her husband with Alzheimer's disease. The interpretive analysis focuses specifically on how the caregiver finds meaning in the caregiving process. The analysis reveals that the caregiver constructs meaning by emphasizing particular aspects of her experiences, including cherished memories, creating a happy life by living life intensely, and counting her blessings. While some caregivers naturally find such meaning, this study suggests that reading the narratives of others as well as writing about one's own thoughts and feelings can facilitate this meaning-making process. Structured written emotional expression, in particular, fosters meaning-making, diminishes psychological distress, improves immune function, and promotes health and well-being.     

How to Understand Communicative Musicality?

Music is to a large extent understood as if it is a language. This is also true when it comes to the recently published book Communicative Musicality edited by Stephen Malloch and Colwyn Trevarthen (2009a). In this essay it is demonstrated that a lingocentric understanding of music is strongly connected to modernity, but also that early experimental psychology presupposed a distinction between music and language. Polyphony, therefore, is here presented as a characteristic for the musical system.

Story Recall and Narrative Coherence of High-Functioning Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders

Previous research has found few quantitative differences between children with high-functioning autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) and well-matched controls in the length, complexity, and structure of their narratives. Researchers have noted, however, that narratives of children with ASDs have an unusual and idiosyncratic nature. This study provides an analysis of narratives in 17 children with high-functioning ASDs and 17 typically developing children matched on age, gender, language abilities, and cognitive abilities. We examined story recall and narrative coherence. The study revealed no group differences in story length or syntactic complexity. Children with ASDs also did not differ from controls in their use of the gist of a story to aid recall, or in their sensitivity to the importance of story events. Children with ASDs did, however, produce narratives that were significantly less coherent than the narratives of controls. Children with ASDs appeared less likely to use the gist of the story to organize their narratives coherently. These findings are discussed with regard to their relationship to other cognitive and linguistic difficulties of children with ASDs.     

Chapters of Our Lives: Life Narratives of Midlife and Older Australian Women

A narrative approach was used to explore whether women perceive their later years as a time of loss, stability, or gain, and the explanations they give for their perceptions. Life review interviews were held with 20 married or previously married mothers aged 60–65 living in lower-income suburbs of Sydney, Australia. Participants were asked to consider their life story as a book, to divide the book into chapters, and to entitle each chapter. Two types of gain narrative accounted for 70% of the stories: one (breakouts) described gains that resulted from the womans own actions, and the other (stress relief) described gains from role changes and the passage of time. A further 20% described continuing contentment with their lives, and 10% of the accounts described later life in terms of losses. The findings suggest that one reason for the later life satisfaction regularly found by surveys of older adults may be the disappearance or diminishment of previous life stressors. As part of a planned cohort comparison, similar interviews were held with women aged 50–55 and 40–45. An additional category of ongoing stress was required to accommodate their narratives.     

“Hello,can you hear me?”: Narratives of online mental health counselling among Filipino adults during the pandemic

Filipinos are often reluctant to seek professional mental health (MH) help. However, literature reveals that online counselling is preferable to face-to-face (F2F) MH services, with the pandemic possibly magnifying technology's anonymity and disinhibiting benefits. To further explore facilitators of online MH help-seeking, this study tapped into the lived stories of Filipino adults who experienced at least one counselling session from March 2020 to March 2022. Among 83 screened respondents, 11 semistructured interviews were transcribed and analysed following Crossley's (2000) method. Findings reveal an overarching online MH counselling narrative composed of three phases and their respective events: (a) Precounselling (Resiliency Narrative versus MH Awareness, Turning Point, and Linking versus Searching); (b) Counselling (Two-way Introduction, Unloading and Untangling, and Decision to Maintain or Terminate); and (c) Postcounselling (Relapse and Journey towards Growth and Advocacy). Three all-encompassing facilitators were embedded throughout the process: Autonomy, Financial Capability, and MH Institutions. Notably, participants attributed their MH help-seeking to autonomy, despite culture and stigma, because of enabling environments that entail heightened MH literacy, positive past experiences with professional MH help, social support and encouragement, and a sense of shared reality. Benefits unique to online counselling were also apparent among participants' narratives, including alleviating geographical boundaries and added financial and personal pressures. Overall, findings posit that Filipino adults consider online counselling as a preferable alternative to F2F counselling, thus necessitating further development and institutional support.