This study explored the normativity of individual life scripts and their relation to actual life story memories across countries (Turkey and Germany) and subcultures (urban vs. rural, of migrant vs. of indigenous descent). Young adults from provincial Karabük and metropolitan Istanbul (Turkey), second generation Turkish migrants and Germans from Frankfurt a.M. (Germany) provided both their individual versions of the life script and seven most important personal memories. We expected the agreement on the life script, that is, its normativity, and correspondingly its guiding influence on the selection of life story memories to correlate positively with a collectivistic, negatively an individualistic cultural orientation, that is, to be highest in provincial Karabük, less in Istanbul, still less in Turkish migrants in Germany, and finally lowest in native Germans. The study confirmed expectations for the normativity of life scripts, but not for the normativity of most important memories. We conclude that the normativity of life scripts is influenced both by the individualist vs. collectivist orientation.

We applaud Jonathan Koppel and Dorthe Berntsen for picking up a neglected finding (Rubin & Schulkind, 1997) on different temporal locations of the reminiscence bump depending on the kind of instructions used, providing empirical support by reviewing the evidence which has accumulated in the meantime. The reminiscence bump is one of the most stable findings on autobiographical memory in adults over age 40 (Rubin, Wetzler, & Nebes, 1986). The bump is relatively small compared to the recency effect when memories are elicited by cue-words, but rather large when memories that are significant for one's life or the self are elicited. In addition, cued recall produces a slightly earlier bump in adolescence compared to instructions asking for important memories, which lead to a bump in emerging adulthood. Despite the variation between studies, the trend is convincing and poses interesting questions. The authors discuss the explanatory power of five approaches to the bump. They basically conclude that none explains the different timing of the two bumps. However the authors advocate the life script as the best account, because it is contradicted least by the findings by virtue of not making any claims about encoding factors.We contribute three arguments, couching them in terms of theoretical elements needed to explain the differences in the temporal location of the bump. First we underline the need to model how differing instructions evoke different retrieval paths. Second we discuss the principal theoretical elements that need to be involved in a satisfactory explanation. Third we suggest ideas for explaining the adolescence bump produced by cue word-elicited memories

In adolescence, remembering the personal past and understanding what kind of person one is intertwine to form a story of one's life as the most extant, informative, and flexible form of self-representation. In adolescence, the striving for self-coherence translates into a quest for global coherence of the life story. We suggest that contextualizing is a fifth means for creating global coherence in life narratives besides the cultural concept of biography, temporal, causal-motivational, and thematic coherence. We present three kinds of contextualizing in life narratives, the temporal macrostructure, sociohistorical contextualizing of one's life, and hierarchical and linear segmenting of the text and life. These three forms of contextualizing in life narratives by their authors are complemented by three forms of contextual influences on life narratives analyzed by researchers, namely the historical, personal, and communicative situation in which they are recounted. Contextualizing is exemplified by the life narrative of a young migrant.

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Biriminde yürütülen ayaktan bilişsel davranışçı yönelimli grup terapisi programı ve sonuçları hakkında bilgi verilmesi amaçlanmıştır. Yöntem: Grup psikoterapisi programı, majör depresyon tanısı almış ergenlerin tedavisine yönelik olarak Clarke, Lewinsohn ve arkadaşları tarafından geliştirilen bilişsel davranışçı yönelimli grup terapisi programı temel alınarak hazırlandı. Her biri 12 seanslık 10 grup programına katılan ve farklı tanıları bulunan (depresif bozukluk, anksiyete bozukluğu, davranım bozukluğu gibi) 100 ergen hastanın tedavi süreç ve sonuçları değerlendirildi. Bulgular: Hastaların %24'ü tedaviyi tamamlamadı. Cinsiyetin veya psikiyatrik tanının tedaviyi tamamlama üzerinde etkisi olmadığı görüldü. Özellikle öğrencilerin okul dönemindeyken programı tamamlayamadığı saptandı. Sonuç: Ergenlere yönelik bu terapi programı, pratik olarak kolay uygulanır bir programdır. Öğrencilere tatil dönemlerinde uygulanması tedaviyi tamamlama oranını artırabilir.