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

“…including personality traits, goals, and life stories – i.e., the narrative representation of select memories that creates a coherent identity integrating one’s past, present, and future (Adler, Chin, Kolisetty, & Oltmanns, 2012; Habermas & Bluck, 2000; McAdams, 1996; McAdams & McLean, 2013).”

“Narratives also function to create a link between past, present, and future through identification of common life themes or tasks (Habermas & Bluck, 2000; Pasupathi, Mansour, & Brubaker, 2007).”

“In Western societies, life-stories begin to emerge in adolescence in response to the psychosocial challenge of constructing a coherent identity (Habermas & Bluck, 2000; McAdams & Olson, 2010).”

“Thus, memories may serve to form meaning for the individual (Conway, 2003), and meaning making may be a way in which a.m. represents and integrates experiences in some causally coherent fashion (Habermas & Bluck, 2000).”

“Meaning-making is one critical aspect of autobiographical reasoning (Habermas & Bluck, 2000) through which individuals link events to the self across time (McAdams, 2013).”

“We also know that young people develop the psychological organization of the life story in adolescence and that our participants would likely not yet have developed the perception of life narrative beyond the recounting of childhood events (Habermas & Bluck, 2000).”

“Autobiographical memories have a crucial role in one of the major psychosocial tasks of adolescence; the development and strengthening of identity and self-concept (Habermas & Bluck, 2000; McLean, 2005).”

“…suggested to be rough sketches of the typical (and idealized) life course helping the individual build a skeletal account of her/his life story (Habermas & Bluck, 2000; Rubin & cultural norms and the present findings suggest that goal relevance, emotional intensity and importance may be the…”

“First of all, emotions appear to have the same formal structure as stories, with the normative sequence of normality, appraisal of a highly relevant non-normal event, emotional reaction, and ensuing action (Habermas & Bluck, 2000 ).”

“This process is enhanced by normative cultural expectations that young people should be able to construct coherent stories about their individual process of identity formation by their mid-to-late twenties (Habermas & Bluck, 2000; McAdams, 2006).”

“Thus, at this developmental stage of emerging adulthood, individuals integrate their life into a culturally meaningful story that incorporates who they were in the past, who they feel they are in the present, and who they aspire to be in the future (Habermas & Bluck, 2000 ).”

“…specificity, topic, and valence (Allé et al., 2016a, 2016b; D’Argembeau et al., 2008; Raffard et al., 2009, 2010; 2015) or those that are regarded as critical for narrative identity, including dimensions of agency and autobiographical reasoning (or causal coherence; Habermas & Bluck, 2000).”

“He also adopts the arguments of Habermas and Bluck (2000) that we do not have all the necessary cognitive tools to do this ‘identity work’ until later adolescence.”

“At the level of narrative identity, change occurs through a process called autobiographical reasoning (Habermas & Bluck, 2000), sometimes simply referred to as narrative processing (Singer & Bluck, 2001).”

“…stories, vicarious life stories are constructed by selecting some events over others, organizing events into coherent accounts, and interpreting the effects of events on the person (Habermas & Bluck, 2000; McAdams, 1996; Pasupathi, Mansour, & Brubaker, 2007; Singer, Blagov, Berry, & Oost, 2013).”

“First is the achievement of autobiographical reasoning in adolescence, or the cognitive capacity to integrate previously episodic memories into a more coherent plot form characterized by direction and purpose (Habermas & Bluck, 2000; Köber, Schmiedek, & Habermas, 2015).”

“…continuity contributes to the narrative’s coherence (Crossley, 2003; Gergen, 1998), helps create causal links between life events (Barclay, 1996; Habermas & Bluck, 2000; Habermas & Paha, 2001; Labov, 1997), connects experiences to a meaningful whole (Holma & Aaltonen, 1998), and enables humans…”

“Emerging adulthood also brings increased cognitive abilities to understand the cumulative role of events and circumstance in shaping human actions (Habermas & Bluck, 2000).”

“The ability to form these connections is tied to developments in cognition and emotion that gradually unfold over adolescence (Habermas & Bluck, 2000).”

“Broadly, autobiographical reasoning covers the attempt tomake sense of the important events in one's life and establishing self-continuity by creating connections between past events and the self (Habermas and Bluck, 2000).”

“This is a measure of local incoherence involving neighboring clauses in a text (Habermas & Bluck, 2000).”

“A. Mesghina and L.E. Richland Contemporary Educational Psychology 63 (2020) 101926 which individuals gain the requisite skills in emotional interpretation, problem solving, effortful coping, and cognitive control (Compas, 1987; Denham, 2007; Habermas & Bluck, 2000; McRae et al., 2012).”

“Compared with younger adults, older adults find the maintenance of self-continuity less challenging as they typically seek to sustain and optimize existing self-related knowledge [40].”

“People begin to sense their bi-ographical identity in adolescence, continuing into adulthood (Habermas & Bluck, 2000).”

“Through reasoning about the meaning of chapters, individuals construct links between chapters and their selves, also termed self-event connections (Habermas & Bluck, 2000; Pasupathi, Mansour, & Brubaker, 2007).”

“In contrast, even as late as adolescence, children’s narratives are lacking in this perspective (e.g., Bluck & Habermas, 2001; Fivush, 2011; Habermas & Bluck, 2000; McAdams, 2001).”

“…www.jonmd.com The Journal of Nervous a Copyright © 2020 Wolters Kluwer H lives as unfolding in coherent sequence over time (e.g., Habermas and Bluck, 2000; McAdams, 1996) and metacognition or the processes by which personal experience is integrated into a coherent sense of…”

“These findings are justified by developmental limitations in their capacity for autobiographical reasoning, which is fundamental to elaborating a continuous and coherent life narrative (Habermas & Bluck, 2000).”

“Yet, there is some evidence that younger children who have many changes and events in their lives (such as those in care) also engage in LSW although lack the organisational tools to integrate events or stories into a life story (Habermas and Bluck, 2000) – which indicates the importance of adults in supporting them t…”

“Following Erikson’s (1950) theory of psychosocial development, young adulthood is associated with the development of a more and more stable self-concept (Conway & Holmes, 2004; Habermas & Bluck, 2000; Wolf & Zimprich, in press).”

“…that emphasize the importance of adolescence and early adulthood for personal development (Conway & PleydellPearce, 2000; Glück & Bluck, 2007; Habermas & Bluck, 2000; McAdams, 2001); a cognitive mechanisms account that focuses on the novelty, distinctiveness, and elaborative processing of…”

“People’s memories of their past not only help provide themwith a sense of their past but also are important contributors to their sense of identity and feelings of coherence in their lives (Habermas & Bluck, 2000; McAdams, 2001, 2006).”

“The developmental claim that the life story develops only in adolescence ( Habermas & Bluck, 2000; McAdams, 1985) has been substantiated first in a small sample of 12 12-, 15-, and 18-year olds (Habermas & Paha, 2001) and then in a sample of a total of 110 8-, 12-, 16-, and 20-year olds.”

“Although interviews rely on retrospective self-report, previous research has shown that adults are capable of meaningfully reflecting on significant life events and reconstructing narratives that reveal perceived developmental stages [30, 31].”

“But it is not until adolescence and the emerging adulthood years that the socio-cognitive capacities have matured (Habermas & Bluck, 2000) to enable retrospective reasoning about how life events and periods may coalesce to form an extended temporal story of the self.”

“It is more likely to be purposeful (e.g., Lilgendahl & McAdams, 2011; McLean & Fournier, 2008; Pasupathi & Mansour, 2006) and reflect the extent to which a person has reasoned about an event in an effort to make it make sense in the story of their life (Habermas & Bluck, 2000).”

“For the adoptee, the ability to construct a coherent narrative emerges more fully in adolescence (Brodzinsky et al., 1984, 1992; Habermas & Bluck, 2000), during which time the young person has expanded cognitive and emotional abilities to “understand adoption in all its social, legal, ethical, and…”

“…perspective, emerging adulthood is a key period for identity development, facilitated by advances in cognitive abilities and expanding social milieus that allow individuals to construct complex notions of the self (Habermas & Bluck, 2000; McAdams, 2001; see also Arnett, 2006; Erikson, 1968).”

“This can be part of the process of constructing a narrative history of the self ( Habermas & Bluck, 2000 ; McAdams, 2001 ; McLean, 2008 ).”

“From a developmental perspective, it is interesting that the ability of narrating a life story develops in adolescence and young adulthood (T. Habermas & Bluck, 2000; T. Habermas & Paha, 2001) which parallels the age of identity formation according to Erikson.”

“…fulfill culturally dependent expectations of autobiographical coherence and follow the implicit understanding of typical events and their timing (Habermas & Bluck, 2000) However, our identities do not have an ‘essence’ on the ontological or psychological levels; lived experience is not entirely…”

“Indeed, coherency in autobiographical thinking is suggested to be a crucial component in developing and maintaining self-identity (Habermas and Bluck, 2000; Adler et al., 2015).”

“…with others, and pass insight and life lessons onto later generations – all while situating one’s life story in a broader cultural context that determine which life events are important and should be valued (Habermas & Bluck, 2000; McAdams, 2013; McLean & Syed, 2015; Nelson & Fivush, 2004).”

“Thus, it is surprising that individuals’ presentation of parents in life narratives which reflect personality development and narrative identity (Habermas & Bluck, 2000; McAdams, 2013) has not yet been explored.”

“The function of a personal, autobiographical, memory is to ground the self and its social position as well as to regulate the self ’s current and future behaviors, goals and problem solving (Neisser, 1988; Brewer, 1999; Habermas and Bluck, 2000; Pillemer, 2003; Conway, 2005).”

“…and the extent to which individual autobiographical memories are represented in relation to other events and experiences in the past, present, and future of the narrator (e.g., Bohn & Berntsen, 2008, 2014; Fivush & Zaman, 2014; Habermas & Bluck, 2000; see Habermas & Reese, 2015, for a review).”

“…memories provide us with a sense of our past, but recently it has been argued that they provide much more: they are important contributors to our identity and provide our lives with a sense of coherence (Conway, 2005; Conway & Holmes, 2004; Habermas & Bluck, 2000; McAdams, 2006).”

“Through narrative, in fact, people give a coherent account of an experience and to make sense of it by giving it an order, finding causes, and expressing emotions and thoughts [17].”

“To do so, a preliminary study would have to be done in which reading habits were measured and life stories recorded, with adolescents being the most likely population as this appears to be when life stories emerge (Habermas & Bluck, 2000).”

“Habermas and Bluck (2000) argue that the prerequisite cognitive tools for constructing global coherence in a narrative, as well as the social and motivational demands to construct a narrative, develop during adolescence.”

“According to Habermas and Bluck (2000), younger children have not acquired the ability to coherently integrate several events into a life story.”

“…and an anticipation of the imagined future, a process that requires cognitive skills such as foreshadowing or retrospective reflections, interpretative operations, and autobiographical reasoning (e.g. Habermas & Bluck, 2000; Habermas & de Silveira, 2008; McAdams, 2015b; Pasupathi & Wainryb, 2010).”

“…important during emerging adulthood (Bluck & Alea, 2009; Wolf & Zimprich, 2015), when the cognitive ability level to integrate single memories into a coherent life story has typically been fully developed (Habermas & Bluck, 2000) and individuals are concerned with forming an independent identity.”

“Many researchers claim that identity and memory are profoundly interconnected (Conway & PleydellPearce, 2000; Habermas & Bluck, 2000; Klein & Nichols, 2012; McAdams, 1985; Singer & Salovey, 1993).”