Narrative fragmentation in child sexual abuse: The role of age and post-traumatic stress disorder

Investigating linguistic coherence relations in child sexual abuse: A comparison of PTSD and non-PTSD children

“…In accordance with literature (Miragoli et al., 2014, 2017; O'Kearney et al., 2007, 2011), we assumed that PTSD could have a significant effect on the narrative coherence of children's reports of sexual abuse. Specifically, we hypothesized that the use of some linguistic and semantic words (first-person singular pronouns, conjunctions, cognitive mechanisms, insight and causal words) would relate to distress of the traumatic experience (e.g., Fivush et al., 2002; Tausczik and Pennebaker, 2010).…”

“…Narrative coherence in child sexual abuse testimony has recently been the subject of an ongoing debate (e.g., Klettke et al., 2010; Miragoli et al., 2017; Westcott and Kynan, 2004). In particular, it is not completely clear how children testify under the effect of the post-traumatic symptoms and, above all, there is little knowledge of the differences in organization and structure of depositions given by sexual abuse victims with and without PTSD.…”

“…Indeed, by the age of 6, children provide personal experiences' stories organized according to the main orientation information (who, what, when and where) and to the cognitive and emotive evaluations (Stein, 1988); by the age of 8, the narratives become linguistically more cohesive, temporally ordered and enriched by causal links and attributions of meaning (Peterson and McCabe, 1991; Shapiro and Hudson, 1991; Stein and Glenn, 1982). Age remains a determining factor even in children's traumatic narratives (e.g., Cordon et al., 2004; Di Blasio, Miragoli and Procaccia, 2012; Miragoli et al., 2016; Pipe et al., 2004; Lamb et al., 2000), in terms of coherence (level of orientation: place, time, people and actions), temporal order and evaluations of events (Ghetti et al., 2002; Miragoli et al., 2017; O'Kearney et al., 2007).…”

“…join multiple thoughts together and are significant for providing cohesion and coherence to narratives (Graesser et al., 2004). By analyzing the allegations of child sexual abuse, Miragoli et al. (2017) illustrated that children with PTSD symptoms, compared with children without PTSD symptoms, were less able to provide grammatically cohesive and consistent narratives.…”

A dual-systems perspective on temporal cognition: Implications for the role of emotion

“…Indeed, Huntjens, Wessel, Postma, van Wees-Cieraad and de Jong (2015) showed that when presented with highly arousing pictures depicting a story (i.e., either positively or negatively valenced), participants had a harder time ordering them in chronological order. Furthermore, it has been shown that experiencing a traumatic event can lead to a disrupted narrative of the event (e.g., amongst abused children, Miragoli, Camisasca, & Di Blasio, 2017) which is supported by studies showing a disruptive effect of negative emotions on episodic memory (Bisby, Horner, Bush, & Burgess, 2018). Furthermore, traumatic events would tend to bias the temporal order of the event preceding and following the event itself (Byrne, Hyman, & Scott, 2001).…”