Most popular models of narratives and narrative analyses have been drawn on native stories, yet EFL learners’ narratives have not received due narrative analysis. The present study then aims at scrutinizing the structure of personal English stories as told by EFL learners. To this aim, three hundred narratives were collected through classroom discussions and interviews. Qualitative analysis met...

We investigate what distinguishes reported dreams from other personal narratives. The continuity hypothesis, stemming from psychological dream analysis work, states that most dreams refer to a person’s daily life and personal concerns, similar to other personal narratives such as diary entries. Differences between the two texts may reveal the linguistic markers of dream text, which could be the...

Two studies examined age differences in autobiographical reasoning within narratives about personal experiences. In Study 1 (n=63), people completed brief interviews about turning points and crises in their lives. Older participants were more likely to narrate crises in ways that connected the experience to the speaker's sense of self, that is, to show autobiographical reasoning. This increase ...

Autobiographical episodic recall involves active simultaneous generation and binding of various elements that were present during the initial experience. Deficits in this reconstructive process may account for some aspects of retrograde amnesia (RA) for personally experienced events. Constructive and reconstructive processes may involve similar mechanisms. If so, patients with extensive anterog...

Narratives of the self are embedded within families in which narrative interaction is a common practice. Especially in adolescence, when issues of identity and emotional regulation become key, narratives provide frameworks for understating self and emotion. The authors' research on family narratives suggests that adolescents' personal narratives are at least partly shaped by intergenerational n...

BACKGROUND Recovery from mental illness has been described as a process involving personal growth and a search for meaning. Occupation is a primary medium for human development as well as the creation of life meaning, suggesting the exploration of recovery from an occupational perspective is warranted. PURPOSE To explore the experience and meaning of occupation for 713 people who self-identif...

OBJECTIVE To examine the impact of an international service learning experience (ISL) using a quantitative and qualitative approach. DESIGN AND SAMPLE A descriptive study was used to explore the impact of an ISL experience on global awareness, professional and personal growth with 11 baccalaureate nursing students in the Dominican Republic. INTERVENTION Students participated in a three cred...

OBJECTIVE This article focuses on the lived experience of depression in 20 elderly African American women. METHODS Data on depression emerged from research that qualitatively explored experiences of depression, sadness, and suffering in 120 community-dwelling persons aged 80 and older, stratified by gender, ethnicity, and self-reported health. RESULT We placed women's narratives under three...