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

“…between parent and adolescent can help adolescents and emerging adults as they strive to construct a healthy narrative identity (e.g., Fivush et al., 2011), which is the key psychosocial task of this development stage (Erikson, 1968; Habermas & Bluck, 2000; Rogers, 2018; Syed & McLean, 2016).”

“Consequently, when people are asked to recall important memories from their lives, they use the cultural life script as the normative skeleton of their life stories (Bohn, 2011; Habermas & Bluck, 2000).”

“…meaning-making processes—those in which individuals tell personal stories demonstrating what they have learned about themselves from past experiences—are viewed as a critical component to narrative selfdevelopment (e.g., Habermas & Bluck, 2000; McLean & Pratt, 2006; McLean & Thorne, 2003).”

“Recently, researchers have argued in favour of taking a lifespan developmental approach in studying autobiographical memory (Habermas & Bluck, 2000 ; Schroots, van Dijkum, & Assink, 2004 ).”

“One way to read Erikson’s idea of identity is to see it as an internalized and evolving story of the self that people begin to construct in the emerging adult years (Habermas & Bluck, 2000; McAdams, 1985).”

“…as the motivational dimensions of agency and communion (McAdams et al., 1996); the integrative features of accommodation, meaning-making, and thematic coherence (Habermas & Bluck, 2000; King et al., 2000); or the structural features of contextual and chronological coherence (Reese et al., 2011).”

“The construction of such narratives critically depends on autobiographical reasoning, a process of reflective thinking through which we form links between disparate elements of our life and the self (Habermas & Bluck, 2000).”

“Given that autobiographical memory develops gradually throughout childhood, with the ability to construct a life story emerging during adolescence (Habermas & Bluck, 2000; Nelson & Fivush, 2004), CSA may influence these processes and produce age-related changes in autobiographical memory.”

“…expressions of personality, such as goals and values; and 3) dynamic life stories that provide temporally, causally, and thematically coherent accounts of past, present, and future including interpretations of how events in life have shaped the individual (Habermas & Bluck, 2000; McAdams, 1996).”

“The concept of personal identity is connected to a recall of autobiographical memories, a process of reflective thinking through which we form links between disparate elements of our life and the self (Habermas and Bluck, 2000; Wilkinson-Ryan and Westen, 2000; Startup et al., 2001; Jørgensen et al., 2012; Bech et al.,…”

“Below, we evaluate three possible explanations: misdating, nature of the respondents, and the narrative and fictional nature of the “life story” (Habermas & Bluck, 2000; Köber, Schmiedek, & Habermas, 2015).”

“…of self, we believe that student teachers will likely try to maintain their current self-concept during teacher education, even if the self-concept contains unrealistic beliefs and expectations about themselves as teachers (Greenwald & Pratkanis, 1984; Habermas & Bluck, 2000; Zittoun et al., 2013).”

“In early adolescence, people begin to employ the skills of autobiographical reasoning in order to derive meanings from personal experiences (Habermas & Bluck, 2000).”

“That is to say, autobiographical memory is the story that the person tells about him- or herself—or, at the very least, it is part of that story (e.g. Habermas & Bluck, 2000; McAdams, 1993; Singer & Salovey, 1993).”

“With the developing ability to construct more complex and temporally extended sequences (Friedman, 2000, 2004), linking individual events into larger life motifs (Habermas & Bluck, 2000; McAdams, 1992), and to provide more nuanced and reflective interpretation of self and other (Harter, 1999; Collins, Gleason, & Sesma…”

“Exploration involves both opening oneself up to new experiences as well as creating meaning from those experiences through narrative evaluation (e.g., Habermas & Bluck, 2000; Habermas & Reese, 2015; Luyckx et al., 2008; McLean & Pasupathi, 2012; Waters & Fivush, 2015).”

“Overarching global coherence of life narratives has been conceptualized in three major kinds of textual coherence: temporal, causal–motivational, and thematic coherence (Habermas and Bluck, 2000).”

“In early adolescence, the more sophisticated metacognitive abilities necessary for drawing meaning from and reflecting on the event in relation to the self develop (Habermas & Bluck, 2000; Reese et al., 2011).”

“Life story coherence entails the following three dimensions: the orientation of events in time (temporal coherence), insight into how the events shaped the individual’s life (causal-motivational coherence), and identification of dominant motives and themes underlying various personal experiences (thematic coherence; H…”

“This is especially relevant during adolescence, since adolescents' main developmental task is to form a mature psychosocial identity in which a realistic self-definition and life story are key (Erikson, 1968; Habermas & Bluck, 2000; Harter, 1990).”

“The former, more distal, approach is individual and retrospective; the life story is viewed as an autobiographical project through which individuals make sense of their past [Habermas & Bluck, 2000; McAdams, 1985].”

“…which is the extent to which a narrative makes sense to a naı̈ve listener and is thus able to convey the content and meaning of the described events in a structurally and thematically cohesive manner (Baerger & McAdams, 1999; Habermas & Bluck, 2000; Lysaker et al., 2002; Reese et al., 2011).”

“…self-representation, as it must integrate a person’s changing and idiosyncratic life experiences, but it still is assumed to show sufficient consistency to give unity to a person’s life and to reveal reliable individual differences (Habermas & Bluck, 2000; McAdams, 1993; McAdams et al., 2006).”

“The ability to link past events into a coherent and meaningful life story develops in late adolescence (autobiographical reasoning; Habermas & Bluck, 2000).”

“Subsequent research has supported and extended these findings; for example, by mapping the development of self-identity from early childhood through emerging adulthood (Bakermans-Kranenburg & van IJzendoorn, 1993; Barclay, 1986; Habermas & Bluck, 2000; McAdams, 2001; Mikulincer, 1998).”

“Autobiographical reasoning, which is present when conceptions of the self are connected to personal experiences (Habermas & Bluck, 2000; McLean & Mansfield, 2010), is typically used to develop and secure a sense of personal persistence (i.e., self-continuity; Bluck & Alea, 2008; Chandler et al.,…”

“E-mail: mehnert@uke.uni-hamburg.de 119 consequences of a life-threatening illness such as cancer can shatter self-perceptions, life attitudes, individual assumptions, and value systems and can hamper the sense of autobiographical continuity and coherence (Habermas & Bluck, 2000).”

“…temporal coherence creating temporal orientation by sequential structure and chronology; causal-motivational coherence creating self-continuity that connects life events to personality development; and thematic coherence providing meaning through abstracted life themes (Habermas & Bluck, 2000).”

“…of processing involves forming a narrative about a significant memory, including how the memory is concluded and interpreted as relating to the present self, which may be positive or negative and serve to clarify, transform, or confuse identity (Habermas & Bluck, 2000; Pasupathi et al., 2007).”

“However, because only theme coherence consistently shows variability in adulthood (and incorporates aspects of causal coherence as defined by Habermas & Bluck, 2000), I used only this dimension in this study.”

“Sharing autobiographical memory stories is theorized to serve important psychosocial functions ( Bluck, 2003 ), including maintaining self-continuity ( Habermas & Bluck, 2000 ), developing and preserving social bonds ( Alea & Bluck, 2007 ; Pohl, Bender, & Lachman, 2005 ), and directing and guiding future behavior ( Bl…”

“The ability to create this global coherence develops only in adolescence (Bohn & Berntsen, 2008; Habermas & Bluck, 2000; Habermas & de Silveira, 2008; Habermas & Paha, 2001).”

“And compared with adults, children may be more vulnerable to the dating errors due to their limited knowledge of time and memory dating strategies (Friedman, 2005; Habermas & Bluck, 2000).”

“Autobiographical narratives can refer not only to the reconstructed past but also to the imagined future (Neisser, 1988; Vranić et al., 2018); such narratives jointly form a stable identity, beginning in adolescence and progressing through the life course (Habermas & Bluck, 2000; McAdams, 1995).”

“Furthermore, surprise and insight data suggest that AI can facilitate autobiographical reasoning (Habermas & Bluck, 2000), which plays a key role in personal development, identity exploration and stabilization (Habermas & Köber, 2015).”

“Narratives are also held together by narrative themes that run through a story and help to create coherence out of the different elements (Habermas & Bluck, 2000).”

“Given the age of some of the participants (especially the boys), the issue of producing a life story raised by Habermas and Bluck (2000) could be accomplished by the combination of the diary items, the diary narratives as a whole, the resulting interview, and the initial benchmark interview,…”

“The social developmental changes that occur in adolescence (Habermas & Bluck, 2000) result in the desire for more independence and autonomy (Erikson, 1968; Ryan & Lynch, 1989) and the formation of new and more salient social networks (Furman & Buhrmester, 1992).”

“Coherence has since become a topic of research in multiple domains, being defined in slightly different ways across domains (e.g., Adler, Waters, Poh, & Seitz, 2018; Baerger &McAdams, 1999; Habermas & Bluck, 2000; Lysaker & Lysaker, 2002; Reese et al., 2011).”

“They form links among parts of one’s life as well as between these and the self and its development in an attempt to integrate one’s personal past and present (Habermas and Bluck, 2000).”

“Furthermore, across the transition between adolescence and emerging adulthood some important cognitive processes develop (Habermas and Bluck, 2000; Fioretti and Smorti, 2015), improving young adults’ ability to reflect on and elaborate past life experiences.”

“The construction of life stories includes establishing temporal order and causal links between memories and the self, which would take place during rehearsal (or autobiographical reasoning, Habermas & Bluck, 2000).”

“Moreover, taking a lifespan developmental approach to the study of autobiographical memory (e.g., Habermas & Bluck, 2000), the current study compares young and middle-aged adults to examine age-related effects in the self-reported functions of flashbulb memories.”

“A growing body of research suggests that individuals begin to develop the life story during late adolescence and emerging adulthood, corresponding to the developmental period of interest in the current study (see Habermas & Bluck, 2000; Habermas & de Silveira, 2008; McAdams, 2006; McLean, 2005).”

“A number of investigators (e.g., Conway & Pleydell-Pearce, 2000; Habermas & Bluck, 2000; McAdams, 1993, 2001) have suggested that our memories from earlier periods of our lives (at least, the ones we have once we achieve early adulthood) are those that are most likely to be integrated into our…”

“Overall, partly as a product of cognitive maturation (Habermas & Bluck, 2000; Labouvie-Vief, 2006), the experience of parental depression and the memories of the experience as retold in the narratives appeared to change over time for many respondents, particularly after they left home.”

“A pivotal feature of human cognition is the possibility to remember and re-experience autobiographical events, which are personally and socially outlined in the form of life chronicles (Brewer, 1999; Fivush, 2011; Habermas & Bluck, 2000; Tulving, 2002).”

“Life story coherence (similar to causal coherence; see Bluck & Glück, 2004; Habermas & Bluck, 2000) involves indirectly relevant references to extended time-frames in the life experience of characters involved in the remembered event; that is, information about a characters’ life experience that is…”

“Habermas and Bluck (2000) identified a number of different forms of narrative coherence that are thought to develop in adolescence.”

“The personal narratives that people construct are thought to become organized during adolescence into a coherent life story that provides the person with a sense of unity and purpose (e.g., Habermas & Bluck, 2000).”

“Life narratives provide our experiences with meaning and justify our actions by integrating them into a shared cultural framework (Habermar and Bluck, 2000; McAdams, 2006; Smorti et al., 2008).”

“We also recommend that childbirth narratives from first-time mothers are analyzed in order to test the contribution of autobiographical reasoning [66] and redemption themes [see 67–69] to identity fusion, event-related mechanisms of identity fusion, and PTG.”