87
views
0
recommends
+1 Recommend
0 collections
    0
    shares
      • Record: found
      • Abstract: not found
      • Article: not found

      Getting a life: The emergence of the life story in adolescence.

      ,
      Psychological Bulletin
      American Psychological Association (APA)

      Read this article at

      ScienceOpenPublisherPubMed
      Bookmark
          There is no author summary for this article yet. Authors can add summaries to their articles on ScienceOpen to make them more accessible to a non-specialist audience.

          Abstract

          In the life story, autobiographical remembering and self-understanding are combined to create a coherent account of one's past. A gap is demonstrated between developmental research on the story-organization of autobiographical remembering of events in childhood and of life narratives in adulthood. This gap is bridged by substantiating D.P. McAdams's (1985) claim that the life story develops in adolescence. Two manifestations of the life story, life narratives and autobiographical reasoning, are delineated in terms of 4 types of global coherence (temporal, biographical, causal, and thematic). A review of research shows that the cognitive tools necessary for constructing global coherence in a life story and the social-motivational demands to construct a life story develop during adolescence. The authors delineate the implications of the life story framework for other research areas such as coping, attachment, psychotherapeutic process, and the organization of autobiographical memory.

          Related collections

          Most cited references131

          • Record: found
          • Abstract: not found
          • Book: not found

          The skills of argument

            Bookmark
            • Record: found
            • Abstract: found
            • Article: not found

            Making sense of loss and benefiting from the experience: two construals of meaning.

            Theoretical models of the adjustment process following loss and trauma have emphasized the critical role that finding meaning plays. Yet evidence in support of these models is meager, and definitions of meaning have been too broad to facilitate a clear understanding of the psychological process involved. Using a prospective and longitudinal study of people coping with the loss of a family member, we differentiate 2 construals of meaning--making sense of the event and finding benefit in the experience--and demonstrate that both independently play roles in the adjustment process following the loss. Results indicate that making sense of the loss is associated with less distress, but only in the 1st year postloss, whereas reports of benefit finding are most strongly associated with adjustment at interviews 13 and 18 months postloss.
              Bookmark
              • Record: found
              • Abstract: found
              • Article: not found

              Linguistic predictors of adaptive bereavement.

              The words people use in disclosing a trauma were hypothesized to predict improvements in mental and physical health in 2 studies. The first study reanalyzed data from 6 previous experiments in which language variables served as predictors of health. Results from 177 participants in previous writing studies showed that increased use of words associated with insightful and causal thinking was linked to improved physical but not mental health. Higher use of positive relative to negative emotion words was also associated with better health. An empirical measure that was derived from these data correlated with subsequent distress ratings. The second study tested these models on interview transcripts of 30 men who had lost their partners to AIDS. Cognitive change and empirical models predicted postbereavement distress at 1 year. Implications of using computer-based text analyses in the study of narratives are discussed.
                Bookmark

                Author and article information

                Journal
                Psychological Bulletin
                Psychological Bulletin
                American Psychological Association (APA)
                1939-1455
                0033-2909
                2000
                2000
                : 126
                : 5
                : 748-769
                Article
                10.1037/0033-2909.126.5.748
                10989622
                079bd68d-83b5-4fd7-b6d2-a9a056f9366e
                © 2000
                History

                Comments

                Comment on this article