The ability to narrate stories and a synchronic self-concept develop in the pre- and primary school years. Life story theory proposes that both developments extend to an even later developmental stage, that is, to adolescents' acquisition of a coherent life story. Cross-sectional evidence supports the emergence of a life story in adolescence, but is mixed in terms of later life span development. The present study examines longitudinally the development of global coherence in life narratives across almost the entire life span. Starting in 2003, a total of 172 participants narrated their lives over the course of 8 years (aged 16, 20, 24, 28, 44, and 69 when last tested) resulting in up to 4 life narratives per person. Three aspects of global life narrative coherence--temporal, causal-motivational, and thematic coherence--were measured with global ratings and predicted by their respective textual indicators. Children lacked most aspects of global coherence. Almost all indicators of temporal and causal-motivational coherence increased substantially across adolescence up to early adulthood, as did thematic coherence, which continued to develop throughout middle adulthood.

Personal identity depends on synchronic coherence and diachronic continuity of the self. Autobiographical remembering and autobiographical knowledge as well as the stability of bodily integrity, of social roles, of significant others and of physical and sociocultural environment have been suggested as supporting a pre-reflective sense of self-continuity. Stark biographical discontinuities or disruptions in these areas may destabilise the sense of self-continuity. To test the hypothesis that autobiographical reasoning in life narratives helps to compensate the effects of biographical discontinuities on the sense of self-continuity, life narratives of a lifespan sample with the ages of 16, 20, 24, 28, 44 and 69 (N = 150, 78 female) were investigated. Results confirm that if, and only if there have been biographical disruptions in the past four years, then autobiographical reasoning correlates positively with a sense of self-continuity. The findings contradict the thesis that mere remembering of past episodes is sufficient to maintain a sense of self-continuity under conditions of biographical change.

Self-narratives of patients have received increasing interest in schizophrenia since they offer unique material to study patients’ subjective experience related to their illness, in particular the alteration of self that accompanies schizophrenia. In this study, we investigated the life narratives and the ability to integrate and bind memories of personal events into a coherent narrative in 27 patients with schizophrenia and 26 controls. Four aspects of life narratives were analyzed: coherence with cultural concept of biography, temporal coherence, causal-motivational coherence and thematic coherence. Results showed that in patients cultural biographical knowledge is preserved, whereas temporal coherence is partially impaired. Furthermore, causal-motivational and thematic coherence are significantly impaired: patients have difficulties explaining how events have modeled their identity, and integrating different events along thematic lines. Impairment of global causal-motivational and thematic coherence was significantly correlated with patients’ executive dysfunction, suggesting that cognitive impairment observed in patients could affect their ability to construct a coherent narrative of their life by binding important events to their self. This study provides new understanding of the cognitive deficits underlying self-disorders in patients with schizophrenia. Our findings suggest the potential usefulness of developing new therapeutic interventions to improve autobiographical reasoning skills.

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Considering life stories as the most individual layer of personality (McAdams, 2013) implies that life stories, similar to personality traits, exhibit some stability throughout life. Although stability of personality traits has been extensively investigated, only little is known about the stability of life stories. We therefore tested the influence of age, of the proportion of normative age-graded life events, and of global text coherence on the stability of the most important memories and of brief entire life narratives as 2 representations of the life story. We also explored whether normative age-graded life events form more stable parts of life narratives. In a longitudinal life span study covering up to 3 measurements across 8 years and 6 age groups (N = 164) the stability of important memories and of entire life narratives was measured as the percentage of events and narrative segments which were repeated in later tellings. Stability increased between ages 8 and 24, leveling off in middle adulthood. Beyond age, stability of life narratives was also predicted by proportion of normative age-graded life events and by causal-motivational text coherence in younger participants. Memories of normative developmental and social transitional life events were more stable than other memories. Stability of segments of life narratives exceeded the stability of single most important memories. Findings are discussed in terms of cognitive, personality, and narrative psychology and point to research questions in each of these fields. (PsycINFO Database Record

The ways in which we tell autobiographical narratives reflect a stable feature of individual differences. Further, they suggest that this stable element of personality is necessary, but not sufficient, in accounting for specific event and life narrative coherence.

Reflective functioning (RF) is defined as the ability to infer mental states of others and oneself. While RF has been predominantly studied in attachment research, it might also occur in other autobiographical narratives because of its strong connection to self-organization and self-understanding. Therefore, this study took a first step combining research on RF with developmental narrative research. In a longitudinal lifespan study covering up to three measurements across 8 years and six age groups (N = 172), we aimed to detect RF in entire life narratives to explore its development with age and its contribution to causal-motivational coherence of life narratives. Although scores were initially low, RF could be identified in life narratives, and was found to develop throughout adolescence and to predict life narrative coherence above and beyond age. Results confirm RF as significantly contributing to narrative self-organization, indicating promising new paths in research on autobiographical narratives and self.

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