Center on Autobiographical Memory Research, Department of Psychology and Behavioral Sciences, Aarhus University, Denmark.
Dev Psychol. 2013 Jul;49(7):1232-41. doi: 10.1037/a0030212. Epub 2012 Oct 1.
When do children develop the ability to imagine their future lives in terms of a coherent prospective life story? We investigated whether this ability develops in parallel with the ability to construct a life story for the past and narratives about single autobiographical events in the past and future. Four groups of school children aged 9 to 15 years imagined their future lives and produced past life stories, as well as a cultural life script (i.e., culturally shared assumptions as to the order and timing of important life events). They also produced narratives about single autobiographical events to take place in the near future or recent past. Past and prospective life story coherences developed in parallel across ages, that is, older children told more coherent life stories than younger children, irrespective of temporal direction. However, children produced more coherent stories about single events in the past than in the future. Across age groups, prospective life stories were shorter, contained more life script events and were more positive than past life stories. Life script normativity increased with age and predicted the coherence of prospective, but not of past, life stories. The findings indicate that the ability to tell coherent life stories for the past and future develops in parallel and relies on similar processes. Life script abilities might be a major factor in the development of past and prospective life story coherences but not for the development of single event story coherences.
儿童何时能够以连贯的预期生活故事的形式想象未来的生活？我们研究了这种能力是否与构建过去的生活故事以及过去和未来的单一自传事件的叙述平行发展。四组 9 至 15 岁的学龄儿童想象他们未来的生活，并创作了过去的生活故事，以及文化生活脚本（即关于重要生活事件的顺序和时间的文化共享假设）。他们还创作了关于即将发生或最近发生在过去的单一自传事件的叙述。过去和预期的生活故事连贯性在各个年龄段都平行发展，即年龄较大的儿童比年龄较小的儿童讲述更连贯的生活故事，而不论时间方向如何。然而，儿童对过去的单一事件的叙述比未来的更连贯。在各个年龄组中，预期的生活故事更短，包含更多的生活脚本事件，并且更加积极。生活脚本的规范性随着年龄的增长而增加，并预测了预期生活故事的连贯性，但不预测过去生活故事的连贯性。研究结果表明，过去和未来的连贯生活故事的叙述能力是平行发展的，并且依赖于相似的过程。生活脚本能力可能是过去和未来生活故事连贯性发展的一个主要因素，但不是单一事件故事连贯性发展的一个主要因素。
