Fivush Robyn, McDermott Sales Jessica, Bohanek Jennifer G
Department of Psychology, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, USA.
Memory. 2008;16(6):579-94. doi: 10.1080/09658210802150681.
Narrative coherence and the inclusion of mental state language are critical aspects of meaning making, especially about stressful events. Mothers and their 8- to 12-year-old children with asthma independently narrated a time they were scared, frustrated, and happy. Although mothers' narratives were generally more coherent and more saturated with mental state language than children's narratives, for both mothers and children narratives of negative events were more coherent and contained more mental state language than narratives of positive events overall, and narratives of scary events contained more mental state language than narratives of frustrating events. Coherence appears to be multifaceted, in that the three dimensions of coherence coded, context, chronology, and theme were not strongly interrelated within narratives of the same event, but use of mental state language, including cognitive-processing and emotion words, appears to be more integrated. Moreover, while thematic coherence seems to be a consistent individual narrative style across valence of event being narrated, mental state language appears to be a consistent style only across the two stressful event narratives. Finally, and quite surprisingly, there were virtually no relations between mothers' and children's narrative meaning making.
叙事连贯性以及心理状态语言的运用是意义构建的关键方面，尤其是在描述压力事件时。患有哮喘的母亲及其8至12岁的孩子分别讲述了一次他们感到害怕、沮丧和开心的经历。尽管母亲的叙述总体上比孩子的叙述更连贯，且心理状态语言的使用更丰富，但对于母亲和孩子而言，负面事件的叙述比正面事件的叙述总体上更连贯，且包含更多心理状态语言，而可怕事件的叙述比令人沮丧事件的叙述包含更多心理状态语言。连贯性似乎是多方面的，因为在同一事件的叙述中，所编码的连贯性的三个维度——背景、时间顺序和主题——之间并没有很强的相关性，但心理状态语言的使用，包括认知加工和情感词汇，似乎更具综合性。此外，虽然主题连贯性似乎是一种贯穿所叙述事件效价的一致的个人叙事风格，但心理状态语言似乎只是在两种压力事件的叙述中保持一致的风格。最后，令人相当惊讶的是，母亲和孩子在叙事意义构建方面几乎没有关联。
