The content and processes of autobiographical reasoning in narrative identity

Building on research that focuses on individual differences in the narration of important life events, this study examined the content of self-event connections and thematic coherence in relation to the processes of autobiographical reasoning. Autobiographical reasoning was defined as making connections between the past and the self, the effort reported in making those connections and the emotional evaluation of the connections. Personality differences at the levels of traits and ego development were examined in relation to autobiographical reasoning. One hundred and nineteen younger and older adults completed a self-defining memory interview. Self-event connections reported in the interviews were coded as being about dispositions, values, outlook, and personal growth. Connections were then coded for the degree of cognitive effort required to make the connection and the emotional evaluation of the connection. Finally, the entire interview was coded for the presence or absence of a theme. Results showed that cognitive effort and evaluation differed across type of connection, and ego development and traits moderated some of these results. Further, across connections, there were individual differences in cognitive effort and evaluation, as well as in the reports of a themes across memories. Results are discussed in terms of individual differences in the construction of narrative identity.     

Qualitative Health Research and the IRB: Answering the “So What?” with Qualitative Inquiry

Qualitative inquiry is increasingly used to foster change in health policy and practice. Research ethics committees often misunderstand qualitative inquiry, assuming its design can be judged by criteria of quantitative science. Traditional health research uses scientific realist standards as a means-to-an-end, answering the question “So what?” to support the advancement of practice and policy. In contrast, qualitative inquiry often draws on constructivist paradigms, generating knowledge either as an end-in-itself or as a means to foster change. When reviewers inappropriately judge qualitative inquiry, it restricts the ways health phenomena can be understood. Qualitative inquiry is necessary because it enables an understanding not possible within scientific explanation. When such research illuminates, it can also shed light onto the “So what?” In order to ensure an appraisal of qualitative inquiry congruent with its paradigmatic premises, we suggest the “Illumination Test,” met when findings foster rich understanding of phenomena, resulting in a reflective “aha!”     

The Role of a Facilitator in a Community of Philosophical Inquiry

Abstract: Community of philosophical inquiry (CPI) is a way of practicing philosophy in a group that is characterized by conversation; that creates its discussion agenda from questions posed by the conversants as a response to some stimulus (whether text or some other media); and that includes discussion of specific philosophers or philosophical traditions, if at all, only in order to develop its own ideas about the concepts under discussion. The epistemological conviction of community of philosophical inquiry is that communal dialogue, facilitated by a philosophically educated person, recapitulates and reconstructs the major elements—and even the positions or claims—of the tradition, in one form or another, through the distributed thinking characteristic of dialogical discourse. The pedagogical locus of control of CPI is the group as a whole, which is understood as potentially self‐regulating through a process of ongoing dialectical transformation. The role of the facilitator is to act, among other things, from the Socratic “position of ignorance” as a bridge between concepts and arguments and as a trigger for conceptual system transformation.     

Perceiving a part and the whole of narrative scenes with interactive processing between character and surroundings

Visual recognition is a fast and accurate process. This study adopted a progressive revelation task which demonstrated the dynamic visual process to investigate narrative scene perception. Experiment 1 examined the recognition of character and surroundings that are presented in isolation. The results demonstrated an accumulation of perceptual evidence for recognition as a psychometric function, and character identification was found to be superior to surroundings identification (character advantage effect). Experiment 2 examined the character and surroundings identification in isolated and concurrent presentations. The results showed that less accumulated evidence was required for the concurrent condition than for the isolated condition in the surroundings identification but not in the character identification. The character advantage effect only appeared in the isolated condition. In Experiment 3, both the character and surroundings in semantically consistent or inconsistent scenes were reported. The results showed that consistency effects appeared in both character and surroundings reporting, and the character advantage effect appeared in both consistent and inconsistent conditions. Overall, the results of the present study, which have high ecological validity, supported the existence of an interactive relationship between the visual processing of character and surroundings in narrative scene perception.     

Intersecting identities of elite female boxers: Stories of cultural difference and marginalization in sport

ObjectivesThe project responds to calls for research that attends to issues of cultural diversity within sport and that facilitates expanded understandings of socially constructed identities. The intersecting identities of elite female boxers are explored in terms of how they shape experiences of marginalization and well-being within sport. Focus is on constructions of race and ethnicity, language, and religion.DesignAn intersectional lens grounded in social constructionism was integrated with a cultural sport psychology approach to espouse the complexity, fluidity, and multi-dimensionality of the athletes’ identities as the product of intersecting narratives.MethodsMandala drawings and conversational interviews were employed as open-ended data collection processes that enabled the participants to share their identities. Portrait vignettes were then developed as creative nonfiction to elucidate how identities dynamically intersect and shape sport experiences.ResultsFive portrait vignettes layer together to show issues of identity expression, oppression and White privilege within the boxing context. The stories provide contextual insight into the ways in which athletes continually construct and negotiate identities in relation to dynamics of difference and sameness. They move fluidly between identities that are valued and identities that are marginalized, moments of open expression and moments of concealment.ConclusionsThe research contributes to social justice missions within sport by illuminating how certain identities result in individuals being dis/advantaged, socially excluded, and discriminated against. Possibilities are revealed for challenging social inequalities and facilitating more inclusive sport spaces that resonate with who athletes are as holistic, multifaceted people.     

An ethnographic inquiry of cooperative learning implementation

Qualitative research methods were employed to explore variations in teacher implementation of a research-based model of cooperative learning. Participants included five middle school math and science teachers who were trained in the Johnson, D.W. and Johnson, R.T. [Johnson, D. W., & Johnson, R. T. (1983). The socialization and achievement crisis: Are cooperative learning experiences the answer? Applied Social Psychology, 4, 199-124.] model of cooperative learning. Implementation was examined via interview and observation. Principles from cognitive psychology defined constructs for study, which included teacher concepts, plans, and enactment of cooperative learning in the classroom. Study design included features characteristic of ethnographic inquiry: prolonged engagement, purposeful sampling, persistent observation, multiple source data collection, and recursive interpretation. Triangulation of data sources revealed that relationships between concepts, plans and enactment were mediated by teaching style, teaching context, and degree of teaching expertise. Findings suggest that when attempting to implement cooperative learning lessons, teacher may benefit from attention to teacher and student roles, curricular requirements, instructional time, and classroom management skills. Findings further demonstrate the important contributions of qualitative research to the cooperative learning literature.     

Failing to come to terms with things: a multi‐storied conversation about poststructuralist ideas and narrative practices in response to some of life's failures

This paper is designed to demonstrate some of the multi‐storied representational possibilities available to us as writers and practitioner‐researchers. It highlights some of the opportunities that are available to therapists and the people who consult them when they describe their conversational space as a site for co‐research. It illustrates the reciprocity present in conversations, including therapeutic conversations, by juxtaposing three stories that are interrelated retellings from different writing genres. In positioning poetic, storied and more academic/interpretative texts alongside each other, we hope to trouble the edges between academic and creative writing and also between practice and research. In placing these stories next to each other we seek to disrupt carefully contained ‘client’ and ‘therapist’ positions. We intend to question some current bereavement orthodoxies by demonstrating some less taken‐for‐granted ways in which people, living and dead, can and do continue to sustain each other's lives. We also hope to invite the readers and future writers of this journal to play alongside us in this conversation.     

Linguistic correlates of self in deceptive oral autobiographical narratives

The current study collected orally-delivered autobiographical narratives from a sample of 44 undergraduate students. Participants were asked to produce both deceptive and non-deceptive versions of their narrative to two specific autobiographical question prompts while standing in front of a video camera. Narratives were then analyzed with Coh-Metrix software on 33 indices of linguistic cohesion. Following a Bonferroni correction for the large number of linguistic variables (p < .002), results indicated that the deceptive narratives contained more explicit action verbs, less linguistic complexity, and less referential coherence (sentences being cohesive with each other). The results support a theory that, in deceptive narratives, there is greater narrative distance between the self that narrates and the self that is narrated about. This suggests that narrative selves are constituted not as autonomous selves, but are subject to processes (e.g., psychological, linguistic, social) that are likely operating on a subconscious level.     

Collaborative narration of the past and extraversion

We propose that collaborative narration is a process in which narrative identity develops, and we examine individual differences in extraversion in such narration. Two studies are presented: retrospective and experience sampling episodes of collaborative narration, the first with self-defining memories, the second with everyday narration. Across both studies, extraversion was associated with an increased frequency in collaborative narration. This finding was not explained by the ‘talkativeness’ item in the extraversion measures. Further, more extraverted people shared their self-defining memories with more people and were more comfortable sharing than less extraverted people, the impact of extraversion was specific to mutual reminiscence in everyday narration, and mutual reminiscence was more enjoyable for those who are more extraverted than introverted. Implications from these data for understanding individual differences in identity and narrative development are discussed.     

特需医疗服务供方意向调查分析

剖析目前特需医疗服务供方所存在的主要问题,初步探讨在我国发展特需医疗服务适宜的承担主体。采用个别访谈和问卷调查的方法对来自不同性质的医院的医护人员和医院管理人员进行了意向调查。结果显示,医院发展特需医疗服务并不是解决医务人员收入问题的有效手段;公立医院发展特需医疗服务势必会对其普通医疗服务带来负面影响。建议在确保大部分公立医院只提供普通医疗服务的基础上,由私立医院和一部分公立医院作为特需医疗服务的承担机构。