A longitudinal study of global coherence in life narratives from age 8 to 70

Abstract

When telling the own life story the individual is challenged to construct a coherent narrative, which is a cognitive and narrative performance. Not only the listener, but also the narrator wants to bring the multiple single events of his life into a coherent organization in order to demonstrate the own biographical development and to justify how one has become the person the one is at present. In a longitudinal study a total of 531 life narratives were collected in three waves. Since 2003 the participants of six age groups (presently 16, 20, 24, 28, 44 and 70 years old, 145 participants) told us their life stories every four years. We studied the development of global coherence of life narratives over almost the entire lifespan (8-70 years) by coding linguistic indicators at the level of propositions, by rating the global impression of listeners, by analyzing in terms of how well-formed the beginnings and endings of the life stories are and whether they follow a linear temporal order. The findings of the third wave replicate prior cross-sectional findings on development of global coherence in life narratives across adolescence and confirm them longitudinally. Temporal coherence is developed by midadolescence. By the age of 12, the majority of life narratives began with birth, ended in the present and followed mainly a linear temporal order. Regarding the overarching linear temporal macrostructure, it turned out that from age 20 on, the use of well-formed beginnings and endings and the maintenance of a comprehensible linear temporal order were well established. Causal-motivational coherence is developed by young adulthood and thematic coherence only in mid-adulthood.