Getting A Life: The Emergence of The Life Story in Adolescence

Psychological Bulletin Copyright 2000 by the American Psychological Association, Inc.
2000, Vol. 126, No. 5, 748-769 0033-2909/00/$5.00 DOI: 10.10371/0033-2909.126.5.74S
Getting a Life: The Emergence of the Life Story in Adolescence
Tilmann Habermas and Susan Bluck

Max Planck Institute for Human Development
In the life story, autobiographical remembering and self-understanding are combined to create a coherent
account of one's past. A gap is demonstrated between developmental research on the story-organization
of autobiographical remembering of events in childhood and of life narratives in adulthood. This gap is
bridged by substantiating D. P. McAdams's (1985) claim that the life story develops in adolescence. Two
manifestations of the life story, life narratives and autobiographical reasoning, are delineated in terms
of 4 types of global coherence (temporal, biographical, causal, and thematic). A review of research shows
that the cognitive tools necessary for constrtlcting global coherence in a life story and the social-
motivational demands to construct a life story develop during adolescence. The authors delineate the
implications of the life story framework for other research areas such as coping, attachment, psycho-
therapeutic process, and the organization of autobiographical memory.
For the past 2 decades, many disciplines in the social sciences 1999) and academic theorizing about the life span development
and humanities have seen attempts to reformulate their basic (Baltes, Lindenberger, & Staudinger, 1998) of individuals' auto-
concepts in terms of narrative (e.g., history; see Evans, 1997; biographical reasoning. The focus is on adolescence as a develop-
White, 1987). These developments have also influenced psychol- mental bridge between childhood and adulthood in the integration
ogy, leading to a renewed interest in narrative in psychology in and interpretation of memories of one's personal past. By about
general (Baumeister & Newman, 1994; Bruner, 1987; Howard, age 10, children have event representations that allow them to
1991; Schank & Abelson, 1995) and to a revaluing of the life story integrate temporally proximal episodes into a story format struc-
in particular. The life story is used as a theoretical m o d e l and tured by goals. Adults, however, are able to organize memories in
research method in the fields of personality (McAdams, 1998; much more complex ways by placing events in the frame of a
Nasby & Read, 1997), cognitive (Fitzgerald, 1996; Robinson & whole life. This is apparent in adults' ability to produce life
Taylor, 1998), and clinical psychology (Rybaczyk & Bellg, 1997; narratives.
Schafer, 1983), as well as gerontology (Bluck, in press; Coleman, This gap between research on how children Organize past events
1999). and research on adults' ability to narratively organize their whole
The life story allows individuals to organize recollective mem- life has been repeatedly noted (Bruner, 1987; Linde, 1993;
ories (Brewer, 1996) and more abstract knowledge of their past Rosenthal, 1995; Straub, in press). On the basis of Erikson's
into a coherent biographical view. It is an important way to (1968) theory of adolescent identity formation, others have also
establish self-continuity and self-understanding (Pillemer, 1998). proposed that the life story develops during adolescence (Cohler,
In this article, we elaborate the concept of the life story and specify 1982; McAdams, 1985, 1996). To substantiate this claim, we
its development. We focus not on the content of life stories but on elaborate the concept of the life story by taking textual aspects of
their formal aspects. By reviewing research in cognitive, social, life narratives as a starting point. We are not aware of any studies
personality, and developmental psychology and, to a lesser extent, that have attempted to directly test the emergence of the life story
research in sociology and linguistics, we develop an integrative in childhood or adolescence. We nonetheless make a case for the
conceptual framework that is useful in identifying areas and meth- emergence of the life story in adolescence by critically reviewing
ods for future research. evidence of the organization of autobiographical remembering in
This article concerns the human life span at two levels: individ- adults and children and, more specifically, evidence of adolescent
uals' personal reasoning about their own life span (Staudinger, developments that, we argue, provide critical elements of the adult
life story (see Habermas, 1997).
Tilmann Habermas and Susan Bluck, Max Planck Institute for Human Overview
Development, Berlin, Germany.
We thank our colleagues at the Max Planck Institute for Human Devel- Conceptual Framework
opment for their comments and feedback at various stages in the writing of The term life story has been used in two different ways. Socio-
this article. Particularly, we thank Monisha Pasupathi and Ulman Linden- logical, anthropological, and psychological research on the life
berger for their comments on earlier drafts.
course focuses on the unfolding of lives as seen from an observer
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Tilmann
perspective (see, e.g., B. Singer, Ryff, Carr, & Magee, 1998).
Habermas, who is now at the Institute for Medical Psychology, Free
University Berlin, Habelschwerdter Allee 45, 14195 Berlin, Germany, or to Often, the term life histories is used for this objective sequence of
Susan Bluck, who is now at Institute on Aging, University of Florida, 1329 events in a life. In contrast, we focus on the subjective versions of
SW 16th Street, Gainesville, Florida 32610-0177. Electronic mail may be one's life and reserve the term life story for the life as told,
sent to thaber@zedat.fu-berlin.de or sbluck@hpe.ufl.edu. remembered, or thought about by the individual.
748
EMERGENCE OF THE LIFE STORY 749
To clarify the concept of the life story, we differentiate two Notwithstanding these differences, our conceptual framework is
major manifestations: life narratives (full products of the life partially rooted in the Piagetian tradition and therefore shares some
story) and autobiographical reasoning (the process by which the features with cognitive--developmentaltheories. The central the-
life story is formed and used). Life narratives are overt recountings sis of the development of the life story in adolescence is the
of one's life that are bound in time and social context. Life emergence of a new quality, This quality, the global coherence of
narratives are linguistic products that follow syntactic and prag- the life story, however, may be attained to varying degrees, com-
matic rules. Because of our interest in the individual's own rep- parable with the gradual emergence of the story format during
resentation of her or his life, when using the term life narrative, we childhood. We also make a claim regarding the development of an
refer only to those accounts that are structured by the individual ability or competence. We argue that this competence to construct
and not to narratives that are structured by an interviewer. What is a life story has more basic cognitive abilities as its necessary
distinct about life narratives, setting them apart from mere lists of developmental prerequisites.
past events that a child might produce, is the more or less coherent
integration of their elements. Embedding experience in a narrative Scope of the Argument
is a fundamental way of making sense of it (Baumeister & New-
man, 1994). The representation of the life story in memory, the life The scope of our examination of the life story should be made
story schema, and its relation to the temporal and thematic orga- clear from the outset. First, we limit our discussion to the repre-
nization of autobiographical memory (Conway & Pleydell-Pearce, sentation of one' s own life. We do, however, assume that the types
2000) are discussed elsewhere (Bluck & Habermas, 2000; see S. C. of global coherence that define the life story also define analogous
Thompson & Janigan, 1988). representations of the lives of significant others. We thereby fol-
The life story is usually used in a piecemeal fashion (Linde, low the traditions of G. H. Mead (1934) and Vygotsky (Vygotsky
1993) through what we term autobiographical reasoning. Autobio- & Luria, 1930/1993) that locate the origin of social categories in
graphical reasoning is a process of self-reflective thinking or social interaction (cf. Baltes & Staudinger, 1996). Consequently,
talking about the personal past that involves forming links between structural homology is assumed for concepts when applied to
elements of one's life and the self in an attempt to relate one's others and self. This structural homology of biographical and
personal past and present (see also Bluck & Levine, 1998). Auto- autobiographical understanding does not preclude functional
biographical reasoning indicates the evolution of a biographical differences.
perspective that frames one's individuality in terms of a specific The second limitation results from our focus on the development
developmental history. It relies on autobiographical remembering of the social-cognitive means to achieve global coherence in a life
but goes beyond it by enhancing understanding through actively story. This is necessary for defining its specificity as a form that is
creating coherence between events and the self. distinct from the more elementary event representations that
We assume a relatively close link between remembering, rea- emerge during childhood. Consequently, other aspects of autobio-
soning, and narrating. This assumption is based on an understand- graphical understanding, such as the social--interactional origins
ing of autobiographical activity as learned in social interactions. of the life story and its role in modulating emotions (Levine &
We share Fivush's (1998b) view that "autobiography i s . . . the Bluck, 1997; Levine, Stein & Liwag, 1999), in understanding
way we make sense of what happened, and this is fundamentally oneself and empathizing with others (Kernberg, 1975; Main,
a social-cultural process" (p. 486). Kaplan, & Cassidy, 1985), and in prosocial behavior (N. Eisen-
berg, Losoya, & Guthrie, 1997), are neglected. Similarly, we
examine neither cultural variations nor gender differences (deVries
Developmental Issues & Watt, 1996; Fivush, 1998a; Gee & Crawford, 1998) in the life
story.
In referring to the emergence of the life story, we mean that the The third limitation is imposed by the relative paucity of re-
ability to construct a life story emerges in adolescence. We argue search that speaks directly to our contention. To demonstrate the
that this ability depends on more general social-cognitive abilities. emergence of the life story during adolescence, life narratives and
We conceptualize the ability to create a life story not as a basic other forms of autobiographical reasoning need to be measured,
cognitive competence comparable to general cognitive structures without the confound of additional task-demands, across late child-
sensu Piaget (1970) or to structures of moral reasoning (Colby & hood and into early adulthood. At present, this kind of direct
Kohlberg, 1987). Rather, the life story has highly specific struc- evidence is not available. Instead, we review studies on motiva-
tures that are constituted by relations of global coherence. In life tional changes and emerging social-cognitive abilities in adoles-
narratives, these are relations in a text, whereas in autobiographical cence and identify common qualitative elements in these and the
reasoning, these are relations in a life between present self, past life story (Chandler, 1991; Smith, 1991). That is, we present
selves, past events, and past circumstances. The specificity of the evidence that the cognitive abilities necessary to create global
life story gives reason to expect greater interindividualdifferences coherence in a life story and the motivation to do so develop in
than exist in more basic cognitive abilities. adolescence. We interpret age ranges as indirect indicators of
Because there is little direct evidence available on the ability to cognitive and motivational development and use them to relate a
construct a life story, we review the emergence of social-cognitive variety of different developments to draw conclusions concerning
abilities in adolescence that, though they may be used for a variety the probable sequence of developmental steps in the emergence of
of ends, are demonstrated to be instrumental for constructing a life the life story.
story. We conceptualize these abilities as cognitive tools that This article is divided into three major sections. First, we present
converge in the ability to form a coherent life story. the four main types of global coherence in adult life narratives to
750 HABERMAS AND BLUCK
determine the criteria for global coherence in the life story. We and thematically coherent will be recognized as good or real life
then sketch the development of the organization of autobiograph- narratives (for the concept of a good story, see McCabe & Peter-
icai remembering in children, showing that the life story has not son, 1984). Comparing children's narratives of single personal
been researched in childhood and making the case that this is experiences with those of older adolescents, Sun (1998) termed
partly due to children's inability to construct a life story. The third this acquisition of an interpretative stance "the loss of narrative
section, on adolescence, is the focus of the article. We present a innocence." Due to their importance for creating overall global
sequence of social-motivational and social-cognitive adolescent coherence in the life story, causal and thematic coherence are
developments that make it functional and possible for adolescents discussed more extensively than temporal coherence and the cul-
to develop a life story. In the concluding section, ways to substan- tural concept of biography.
tiate our theoretical framework in future research are delineated,
and implications for other areas of research are identified. Temporal Coherence
Coherence of the Life Story in Adulthood In a coherent narrative, remembered events are temporally re-
lated to other events. This requires either remembering dates,
Adults are able to understand and present themselves in bio- which is possible only for a few highly significant events, or
graphical terms by coherently organizing recollective memories reconstructing temporal order on the basis of contextual informa-
and other self-relevant information into a life story (McAdams, tion (Friedman, 1993; Huttenlocher & Prohaska, 1997; C. Thomp-
1985). We describe the ways in which adults organize their views son, Skowronski, Larsen, & Betz, 1996). In modern Western
of their lives by defining four types of global coherence in life cultures, life narratives usually follow a linear chronological order
stories. Because life narratives provide the most extensive and (Fromholt & Larsen, 1991; Fromholt, Larsen, & Larsen, 1995;
explicit representation of a life story, we derive the four types of Luborsky, 1990; Robinson & Taylor, 1998). Some cultures (Lu-
global coherence of the life story from life narratives. borsky, 1990; TenHouten, 1999) and some individuals use a cy-
Depending on their theoretical interests, researchers have pro- clical temporal organization or multiple time lines (Luborsky,
posed various types of global coherence (see, e.g., Coleman, 1999; 1990; Weisser, 1996). Luborsky (1990) and Rosenthai (1995) both
Fiese et ai., 1999; Randall, 1999). The four types of global coher- observed that when inconsistencies in temporal order occur in life
ence we adopt are central in defining the life story and provide a narratives, the temporal orientation is maintained through explicit
heuristic for reviewing relevant research. In contrast to other temporal realignments (as in flashbacks). Temporal ordering pro-
approaches to the formal analysis of life narratives (Mishler, vides a fundamental form of coherence in life narratives. Future
1995), we focus on coherence because it is best suited to differ- research on how temporal coherence is created in life narratives
entiating life stories from other, more limited stories. needs to address not only the use of temporal connectives (mostly
Whereas local coherence concerns neighboring clauses in a text, conjunctions or adverbs) but also the use of explicit dating of
global coherence relates to an entire text. Global coherence is events by reference to the calendar and cross-referencing of events
understood to be "a complex, composite meta-phenomenon, in- and life periods to other parts of the life story or to known
volving multiple strands" (Givon, 1995, p. 59). Multiple types of historical events.
global coherence contribute to varying degrees of overall global
coherence in a given text. Major types of global coherence dis- Cultural Concept of Biography
cussed and studied with regard to text comprehension are referen-
tial, spatial, temporal, causal, and thematic coherence (Fiese et ai., We introduce the term cultural concept of biography to describe
1999; Gernsbacher, 1997; Graesser, Mills, & Zwaan, 1997). The the normative cultural notion of the facts and events that should be
texts that have been used in research are usually specific in content included in life narratives (e.g., birth, affiliations with and transi-
and restricted in temporal extension. Because life narratives span tions from family, institutions, and geographical locations). Bio-
an extended time-range and cover heterogeneous locations, situa- graphical cultural norms define conventional life phases (Conway
tions, and actors (other than the narrator), we suggest that it is & Bekerian, 1987; Nanpon, 1991). Age norms for the timing of
mainly the three latter types of global coherence (temporal, causal, transitions between life phases (Hagestad, 1990; Heckhausen,
and thematic) that are relevant to the life story. Thus, three of the 1989, 1993; Kalicki, 1996; Settersten & Mayer, 1997) provide a
four types of coherence we use here are derived from psycholin- further aid to establishing the sequence of life's events. The
guistic research on text comprehension (for reviews, see Graesser cultural concept of biography may vary among cultures, social
et al., 1997; van Dijk & Kintsch, 1983). We introduce a fourth type classes, and genders, both in terms of typical or normative life
of global coherence that is specific to life narratives. The cultural sequences and in what is considered to be a significant life event.
concept of biography is based on research on how life is subjec- As Schtitze (1984) suggested, awareness of these norms may act as
tively structured by a sequence of age-graded normative events an effective organizer of life narratives by constraining the narrator
and developments (Heckhausen, 1989). Throughout the text, the to discuss progress through life phases and to explain any major
use of the term coherence refers to global coherence if not other- deviations.
wise specified. Research by Clarke (1995) suggested that these shared norma-
Temporal coherence and the cultural concept of biography are tive expectations concerning appropriate and probable life se-
used to form a basic, skeletal life narrative consisting of an ordered quences enable individuals to order undated segments of others'
sequence of culturally defined, major life events. Causal and lives. Future research on uses of the cultural concept of biography
thematic coherence express the unique interpretative stance of the in life narratives could identify the typical events included, events
individual. We suggest that only life narratives that are causaUy that are normatively used as temporal landmarks, and events that
prompt explanations for deviations from the cultural concept of implicit. For example, Ruth, Birren and Polkinghorne (1996)
biography. Cross-cultural variation in all these features is another content-coded life narratives provided by older adults and found
clear direction for research. them to fall into thematic categories such as "life is loving" or "life
is struggling." Implicit thematic similarity can also be assessed by
Causal Coherence rating life narratives for basic motives such as the needs for
intimacy and power (Mansfield & McAdams, 1996; McAdams,
Both philosophers (Bieri, 1986) and linguists (Linde, 1987b)
Diamond, de St. Aubin, & Mansfield, 1997; Singer & Salovey,
have suggested that causal (Robinson, 1996) or explanatory co-
1993).
herence (Trabasso, Suh, & Payton, 1995) is central to life narra-
Life narratives may also contain statements that make thematic
fives because without it, the narrator cannot present herself or
coherence explicit. Narrative analyses show that these typically
himself as having lived a reasonable life. Causal coherence is used
appear in introductory or concluding evaluative statements or
not only to link the episodes within a life phase and to relate life
when commenting on turning points (Bruner, 1994; W. Fischer,
phases but also to explain changes in the narrator's values or
1978; Rosenthal, 1993; Schtitze, 1981). In making such state-
personalityas a result of events over time. Causal coherence may
ments, the individual acknowledges the necessity to interpret the
be established by providing external causes for life's events or
entire life to give it meaning. One way to explicitly thematically
internal causes that are dependent on the individual's own person-
integrate a life narrative is by reference to a central metaphor of
ality, needs, and aspirations over time (see Bruner, 1994; Linde,
oneself (for person metaphors, see Lakoff & Turner, 1989; Lubor-
1987a; Schiitze, 1982). When causal links are lacking (discoher-
sky, 1990).
ence; Linde, 1993), life appears to have been determined by
Another way to explicitly establish thematic coherence is by
chance and therefore to be meaningless (see Krantz, 1998).
making comparisons between several episodes or by declaring a
Narrators and listeners use shared background knowledge for
specific episode to be typical of many others. Repisodic memories
understanding and judging the plausibility of a narrative (cf. Linde,
(Neisser, 1986) may, for example, be of childhood events that
1987a; Moscovici, 1984). This includes assumptions about how
substantiate family myths, reveal the narrator's present character,
individuals are motivated and influenced to lead their lives. Some
or are assumed to have determined the narrator's later life course
researchers have observed that when these shared beliefs about
(see DeConinck & Godard, 1989).
plausible sequences are violated, the narrative becomes unconvinc-
A final way to provide explicit thematic coherence is to describe
ing and the narrator must add explanatory arguments to restore
life in terms of evaluative trajectories, such as "My life has been
plausibility (Linde, 1993; Schtitze, 1984).
a series of ups and downs" or "My life has been all uphill." Gergen
Causal explanations are of prime importance for making con-
and Gergen (1988) suggested a stability, a progressive, and a
nections between the self and events or circumstances. These links
regressive template as basic types that need to be further differ-
are of two major types: explanations of actions and explanations of
entiated when applied to actual life narratives (Sherman, 1994;
personal discontinuity. If the self-characteristics that the narrator
Young, Friesen, & Borycki, 1994). A linear theme may involve
uses to explain specific actions are overarching and stable, they
likening life to a journey (as in life course) or to a year that
may serve to explain a variety of past actions or events and thereby
progresses through various seasons or by viewing life as an un-
integrate them with one another. Discontinuity in self-
folding (the literal meaning of development) of human potential
characteristics calls for another type of explanation. In a sample of
(for life metaphors, see Lakoff & Turner, 1989; Luborsky, 1987).
narratives of individuals' professional careers, Linde (1993) de-
Future research should systematically identify the various mech-
scribed how personal discontinuity or change can, for example, be
anisms by which thematic coherence is achieved. These may
explained as only apparent or as only temporal. Changes in, or the
include drawing explicit comparisons between episodes or be-
development of, the narrator may be explained by the influence of
tween oneself at different times in life or by providing specific
enduring circumstances or specific events that prove to have been
episodes as examples for a more general point (cf. Schiitze, 1984).
biographically consequential (see Mackavey, Malley, & Stewart,
1991; Taylor, 1983). For example, young adults' narratives typi-
cally explain changes in attitudes and values by reference to Four Types, and Only Four Types, of Coherence ?
lessons learned during adolescence (McCabe, Capron, & Peterson,
Two objections may be raised concerning this selection of four
1991). Gaining insight through critical experiences is, however,
major types of global coherence. One objection is that not all life
mentioned more frequently by older adults (Pratt, Norris, Arnold,
narratives are necessarily globally coherent in all of the four ways.
& Filyer, 1999).
We have defined the types of coherence present in a prototypical
Future research might address whether there is a typical struc-
life narrative. We acknowledge that they are not necessarily found
ture in life narratives that is comparable to the intentional structure
in all life narratives. We assume that the degree to which the four
of single stories. Also, methods are needed to more clearly identify
types of coherence are present in a given life narrative determines
the causal structure of life narratives: through specific causal
its overall global coherence. If the recounting of a life were merely
words (causal connectives; Halliday & Hasan, 1976) or by iden-
an unrelated sequence of episodes, it would lack the distinctive
tifying semantic and pragmatic causal relations between state-
characteristics of a life narrative.
ments (Sanders, Spooren, & Noordman, 1992).
Another possible objection concerns the choice of exactly these
four types of coherence. Even if valid arguments for alternative
Thematic Coherence
types of coherence could be presented, however, our four catego-
Thematic coherence is created by establishing thematic similar- ries (a) are sufficiently distinct as well as reasonably comprehen-
ity between various elements of a life. Thematic coherence may be sive, (b) reflect categories used in psycholinguistic analyses of text
coherence, and (c) provide useful categories for reviewing research to remember autonomously during the preschool years, children
on the cognitive developments that, we argue, are necessary for the begin to organize their memory narratives using scripts and story
emergence of a life story in adolescence. structure.
Autobiographical Remembering in Childhood Scr/pts

Research on children's development of scripts and stories and Katherine Nelson (1988) has described the evolution between
on how memories are shared has enormously advanced psychol- the ages of 2 and 3 of generalized scripts that describe normative
ogists' knowledge of the social development of the organization of sequences of actions and specify appropriate actors, locations, and
memory (for a review, see Gathercole, 1998). Our argument con- objects. The linear sequence of events in simple scripts is further
cerning adolescent development builds on these accomplishments elaborated by adding a hierarchical structure in which elementary
and extends this perspective to a later phase of life. Although actions are nested in, or subordinate to, larger action units (e.g.,
event-specific knowledge (Conway, 1992) and recollective mem- getting the ingredients ready is subordinate to making the cookies).
ories are certainly accessible to children, we argue that the orga- Larger action units are remembered better than subordinate ele-
nizational means to connect single events with each other to attain ments by 4- to 5-year-olds (Nelson, 1993). The same trend appears
global coherence in the life story emerge only in adolescence. in tasks in which superordinate elements are used as criteria for
The ability to narrate personal experiences has been interpreted sorting more basic actions (Price & Goodman, 1990; Ratner,
as evidence of the emergence of a "narrated self" that is able to Smith, & Padgett, 1990). Thus, between the ages of 2 and 5, the
weave together "an array of past and present lived experi- child's script format develops from a stereotyped linear sequence
e n c e s . . , into a coherent narrative" (Stern, 1989, p. 168). The of events to a more complex, hierarchically integrated sequence of
emergence of the ability to narrate single personal experiences in events.
a story format has been interpreted as evidence that during the late
preschool years, "personal memories begin to be organized as a Stories
life history" (Fivush, Haden, & Adam, 1995, p. 34; see also
Fivush, 1998a; Haden, Haine, & Fivush, 1997; Nelson, 1996). An even more advanced way to organize events is by construct-
Similarly, Welch-Ross (1995) considered the preschool years as ing a story. Stories mimic the temporal sequence of events and
the time when the self becomes sufficiently organized and psy- normatively contain a setting, a complicating event, a sequence of
chological in nature to structure memories into a life history. attempted solutions, and a resolution (Stein & Glenn, 1979). They
The above quotations provide examples of the occasional im- are structured by an evaluative perspective (Labov & Waletzky,
plications that the life story begins to develop in the late preschool 1967) and an intentional goal structure (Stein & Glenn, 1979). At
years. However, there is no positive evidence that children can about age 5, children learn to structure events into stories, going
construct a coherently organized account of their life that inte- beyond temporal and hierarchical order by construing events in
grates single stories with each other and with the self in the manner terms of an initiating problem and its resolution. They reach almost
that we have described as necessary characteristics of coherent adult-level performance by ages 9 to 11 (Applebee, 1978; Botvin
adult life narratives. Research on autobiographical remembering & Sutton-Smith, 1977; Peterson & McCabe, 1983).
during the first 10 years of life is briefly reviewed below; the focus During the late preschool and the grade-school years, story
is on social-cognitive abilities that prepare the grounds for, but fall elements that are central to the causal structure of a story increas-
short of, the adolescent capacity to coherently consider one's ingly become more memorable than peripheral elements (see, e.g.,
whole life. Trabasso, Secco, & van den Broek, 1984; van den Brock, Lorch,
& Thurlow, 1996; Varnhagen, Morrison, & Everall, 1994). This
enhanced memory for narratively organized events has also been
Social and Structural Aspects of Remembering
confirmed in a naturalistic study. Children who were 4 years old at
Observations in natural contexts show that an infant's verbal the time of a fire alarm remembered the event better 7 years later
remembering with a familiar adult starts at the age of 16 to 20 if they had originally understood the reasons for the alarm and
months and extends to more distant single events at 30 months evacuation, that is, if they had embedded the event in a rudimen-
(A. R. Eisenberg, 1985; Fivush, Gray, & Fromhoff, 1987; Miller & tary story (Pillemer, Picariello, & Pruett, 1994; cf. Peterson &
Sperry, 1988). Autobiographical remembering at these early ages Rideout, 1998).
relies heavily on adults' prompting and sustaining the topical
focus. At 30 months, children begin to actively maintain focus on Do Children Really Lack the Ability
a topic, to produce several related elements of a memory (Fivush to Create a Life Story?
et al., 1987), and to initiate memory-talk spontaneously (Hudson,
1990; Umiker-Sebeok, 1977). By talking about memories, children By the end of childhood, the understanding of simple causally
learn which memories are worth recounting to others (Snow, structured, goal-directed stories is fully acquired. However, these
1990). developments apply only to single stories, although those stories
The degree of elaboration of parents' scaffolding predicts the may contain several episodes that took place over several days or
amount and complexity of children's remembering (Haden et al., even weeks. Still, no systematic attempts have been reported to
1997; Peterson & McCabe, 1994; Tessler & Nelson, 1994). Be- demonstrate that children have acquired an ability to coherently
tween the ages of 3 and 4, structuring and prompting of remem- and evaluatively integrate a multitude of events or stories into a
bering gradually passes from the adult to the child. As they learn life story.
The absence of research on a specific ability is no argument for examine whether it is simply the brevity of the life that makes a
the absence of the ability itself. Researchers seldom attempt to life story difficult to construct is to consider whether an adult such
elicit life narratives from children. The available evidence on as a parent could provide at least a rudimentary life narrative for
failed attempts to elicit life narratives from children is rare and the albeit brief life of her or his own child.
informal. When 5- to 8-year-olds were asked to dictate their We propose that although the brevity of children's lives may
autobiography, many of them made no mention at all of the past play some role, the primary motivation to construct a life story is
(Engel, 1999). Rosenthal (1995) reported informal attempts to related to age-typical demands of adolescence. Following the
elicit life narratives from a 7-year-old, who responded only when discussion of motivation, we present extensive evidence for the
the question was reframed in terms of individual important mem- development of the necessary cognitive tools for autobiographical
ories. The child then provided a series of interesting episodes or reasoning and creating a life story.
important generalized events (Barsalou, 1988), interrelating them
only through rough temporal ordering and anchoring. Two 12- and
Social-Motivational Aspects of the Emergence
13-year-olds, in contrast, responded willingly by providing se-
quences of biographical dates regarding birth and transitions, that
of the Life Story
is, versions of the cultural concept of biography. Similarly, Juen Developmental Tasks of Adolescence
(1997) asked 46 children between the ages of 7 and 10 to integrate
the most significant personal past events into a written story of The motivation for reflective autobiographical self-definition is
their life. Responses consisted of temporally ordered sequences of typical for adolescence and results from an interaction of cultural
episodes and generalized or extended events. Some of the oldest and societal demands and both maturational and psychological
children used beginnings of a cultural concept of biography, but age-specific requirements. The major adolescent developmental
neither explicit global thematic nor causal coherence was evident. task (Havighurst, 1948) is to form a mature psychosocial identity
Further indirect indicators of the absence of the life story in (Erikson, 1968). This includes the development of a mature gender
children are that middle adolescence is the lower age-boundary of identity and sexual orientation and of commitments to significant
authors of published autobiographies (see, e.g., Michener, 1998), others, to educational and vocational pursuits, and to basic values.
of clients with whom life histories are reconstructed (see, e.g., These late-adolescent developments and choices tend to remain
Lichtenstein & Baruch, 1996), of participants in life narrative stable in later life (for a review, see Alwin, 1994). According to
research (see, e.g., Mey, 1999; Piron, 1996; Sander & VoUbrecht, Erikson (1968), identity is formed by a process of reviewing old
1985), and of participants in studies that rely on autobiographical beliefs and views of oneself and by exploring a variety of possible
reasoning (e.g., Adult Attachment Interview [AAI]; Main et al., identities.
1985). The AAI asks for accounts of one's upbringing and rela- The extent of the challenge for adolescents to develop an adult
tionship with parents but also requires autobiographical reasoning identity in the diachronic form of a life story depends, among other
in terms of establishing causal links between one's development things, on historical and social-structural factors. Sociologists
and factors that have influenced one's development. The AAI is suggest that the human life course has become more individualized
used only from mid-adolescence onwards, and even then it has to over the past decades (Beck-Gemsheim, 1983; Bertram & Dan-
be adapted for this age group (Adam, Keller, & West, 1995; Allen, nenberg, 1990; Kohli & Meyer, 1986), requiring individuals to
Moore, Kuperminc, & Bell, 1998; Ward & Carlson, 1995). develop more flexible and individualized identities (Baumeister,
In sum, informal evidence and the lack of research on the life 1987). Defining oneself biographically by reference to one's pre-
story below mid-adolescence suggest that children cannot provide vious life events and contexts allows the integration of self-aspects
coherent responses. If they attempt to provide a life narrative, their in a more complex, flexible, and individualized way. It allows for
accounts apparently consist of several episodes or stories that are multiple and flexible identifications and for the bridging of per-
not integrated with each other or with their life as a whole (Linde, sonal discontinuities that are nevertheless integrated into a some-
1993; Rosenthal, 1995). This conclusion remains tentative as long what coherent and Continuous identity (Fischer-Rosenthal, 1995;
as systematic studies are lacking. Fischer-Rosenthal & Rosenthal, 1997; McAdams, 1996).
The normative expectation in Western societies that individuals
From Stories to the Life Story in Adolescence are able to provide an individualized biographical account of
themselves appears when, in everyday parlance, individuals refer
Following Cohler (1982) and McAdams (1985), we maintain to one another as having a life story (e.g., "He told me his whole
that a life story that integrates single memories and stories with life story"). Outside of personal conversation, society provides
each other and with the self develops in adolescence. Linde (1993) institutionalized occasions that require adolescents to think in
proposed that one reason for children's lack of a life story is the biographical terms (Hahn, 1987). These include job and university
brevity of their lives. Similarly, Rosenthal (1995) claimed that applications, medical and military procedures requiring file-
children have endured fewer changes in their lives than adults and making, and career and personal counseling, including the psycho-
therefore lack the motivation to construct a life story. Many therapeutic elaboration of one's life (Cook, 1996; Goffman, 1961;
children, however, do experience more or less drastic changes in Gubrium, Holstein, & Buckholdt, 1994).
their lives, such as geographical relocations, the divorce of parents,
or the birth of a new sibling. Children may also experience other Interest in Biographical Activities
events that are significant to them but would not be considered
significant to adults, such as making a new friend at day care or The task of identity formation fuels an interest in biographical
being scolded or punished by a respected adult. One way to activities involving thinking, reading, and writing. In a nationally
representative German sample of youth, these activities were sonable but leave unspecified the relations between general
shown to emerge during adolescence (Zinnecker, 1985). Question- formal-operational skills and the construction of the life story. We
naire studies show that the frequency of thinking about oneself extend their work by reviewing evidence on adolescent social-
increases during adolescence (Fend, 1994; Hansell, Mechanic, & cognitive development in areas that concern the cognitive tools
Brondolo, 1986; Seiffge-Krenke, 1985). A radical evaluation of necessary for constructing each of the four types of global coher-
one's life may be involved in the extreme decision to commit ence seen in life narratives.
suicide. The drastic increase in suicide rates during adolescence When reviewing evidence on the development of cognitive
may be interpreted as a sign that adolescents start thinking about abilities, it is essential to differentiate mere performance from
their whole life and its quality. Interviews with older adolescents competence. Insufficient performance may be due to a number of
support this interpretation (D6bert & Nunner-Winkler, 1994). factors besides lack of competence (Flavell & Miller, 1998). These
Adolescents' biographical interest is also evident in the fre- include suboptimal motivation that may, for example, account for
quency with which they keep diaries. Writing a diary usually starts temporal instability in responses and task-specific requirements
in early to mid-adolescence (Fend, 1994; Seiffge-Krenke, 1985; that are extraneous to the cognitive competence in question (Smith,
C. B. Thompson, 1982), although a small number of adolescents 1991). Therefore, it is advisable to use multiple tasks for testing
indicate that they started keeping a diary in late childhood (Burt, the generality of an ability (Chandler, 1991). Ideally, the tasks
1994). In representative samples of 21- to 24-year-olds and 45- to being used require no other abilities than the one that is being
54-year-olds, only 12% and 15%, respectively, of those who had tested and cannot be successfully completed other than by means
ever kept a diary indicated that they had started a diary before of the hypothesized cognitive operation (Chapman & Linden-
age 11, with 13 to 14 years being the most frequent age for the berger, 1988). Assessing competence requires thoroughly analyz-
onset of diary writing (Zinnecker, 1985). One classic study (Bem- ing task requirements as well as eliciting information about how
feld, 1931) showed that when children do keep diaries, it is usually participants mastered a task, for example, by asking for justifica-
at their parents' suggestion and that their diaries are rather listlike. tions of judgments. The more spontaneous and less probed the
In a large study of 12- to 17-year-olds, the most frequently observed reasoning is, the more it should be regarded as an
named reason for keeping a diary (37%) was to document one's indicator of performance level and not of competence. Therefore,
thoughts to look back at later (Seiffge-Krenke, 1985). Keeping a one way to test cognitive competence is to optimize individuals'
record of the past for use in the future was also the most frequent performance by extensive training. Also, the criterion should not
motive for writing diaries mentioned in 74 adolescent diaries be the mean level of performance but rather the maximum level of
collected from three time periods in the 20th century (Soft, 1989). performance. All of these enumerated requirements for testing
As Bemfeld (1931) noted, the most frequent motive for keeping a competence are rarely met in a single study.
diary is autobiographical and resembles the motive for collecting Many of the studies reviewed below, especially in the sections
objects that symbolize the personal past (Habermas, 1999). As on causal and thematic coherence, are rooted in the Piagetian
with diary writing, the explicit use of material possessions as tradition and therefore aim, to varying degrees, at differentiating
souvenirs (Janet, 1928) of one's life is absent in children and performance and competence. We report features of studies that
begins in early adolescence (Dyl & Wapner, 1996; Kamptner, allow the reader to judge the degree to which results identify
1991). emerging abilities. We explicitly comment on the degree to which
Indirect support for adolescents' emerging interest in biography competence is tested by specific studies only in extreme cases in
comes from a representative German sample that was asked for the which clearly nothing but performance is measured or when a
kinds of books they read at least once a month. Biographies were study excels in differentiating competence from performance. We
nominated by 14% of those aged 12 to 15, rising to over 25% in also evaluate research areas in terms of how well they demonstrate
older age groups covering the period from mid-adolescence to that a new cognitive ability emerges in adolescence and whether
early adulthood (Bonfadelli & Darkow, 1986). We have found no the evidence generalizes across a variety of tasks and laboratories.
study of children's interest in reading biographies. Experts in Finally, on theoretical or logical grounds, we evaluate the extent to
reading research confirm that this category is not used in studies of which the specific emerging abilities may be involved in construct-
children's reading interests (B. Franzmann ["Stiftung Lesen," Ger- ing the four types of global coherence seen in life narratives.
man Foundation for Reading Research], personal communication,
June 16, 1999). Diverse evidence suggests that a biographical Temporal Sequencing
interest emerges in adolescence. We suggest that this reflects the
social-structural and developmental requirements for adolescents Even very young children are able to impose some temporal
to develop an individual psychosocial identity. order on events (Bauer, 1997). Three-year-olds can order events by
embedding them in dally and weekly routines (Nelson, 1988). A
Cognitive Tools linear, transitive understanding of time develops in the early school
years (Piaget, 1946; for the preschool years, see McCormack &
The advent of formal-operational abilities (Inhelder & Piaget, Hoerl, 1999).
1959) supposedly enables adolescents to reason hypothetically The few pertinent studies available suggest that the ability to
about their lives and to relate the distant past and remote future to temporally order a series of remote events, however, develops
the present self (McAdams, 1985, 1996; Rosenthal, 1995). Fitzger- later. In studies with 4-, 6-, and 8-year-old children, even the
ald (1986) has referred to adolescents' developing ability to tell youngest were able to correctly remember single events from
meaningful stories about themselves through the use of "inference- specific recent times such as yesterday, last weekend, and last
making mechanisms" (p. 130). These authors' arguments are rea- summer, as corroborated by teachers and parents (Friedman, 1992,
Experiment 1). Only 8-year-olds, however, performed above of a fictitious young and a fictitious old person shown in a
chance level when asked to temporally order the last occurrences photograph. Participants were presented 30 (ll-year-olds) or 50
of four annually recurring events such as their birthday or Christ- (19-year-olds, 35- to 40-year-olds) age-graded life events. All
mas. Even 8-year-olds performed imperfectly in naming the month participants selected about two thirds of the cards as representing
or season of such recurring events and performed poorly when normative life events and ordered them temporally. The group of
asked to make pairwise comparisons of the relative temporal preadolescents (age 11) ordered the events according to the nor-
distance of two events (Friedman, 1992, Experiment 2). Children mative sequence with only a few deviations. Adolescents (age 19)
in preschool and grade school based judgments of temporal order accomplished the task perfectly, whereas adults (35-40 years)
on temporal distance, with accuracy decreasing the more distant again showed more variation. In contrast to the preadolescents, the
the events were (Friedman, Gardner, & Zubin, 1995). adults, however, did not violate established cultural or logical
In adults, the ability to order distant events relies on the ability conditionalrelationships between items. In a separate task, adults
to use structured temporal systems, such as the calendar, or land- were better than preadolescents at sorting the life events into one
mark events for reconstructing temporal order and dates (Fried- of five age periods. The authors concluded that whereas the pre-
man, 1993). Use of conventional calendar knowledge apparently adolescents' performance demonstrated their imperfect mastery of
begins to develop only after age 8. In a large sample of 5- to what we term the cultural concept of biography, the adults con-
12-year-old children, those older than 8 years showed evidence of veyed a more realistic variation in the life course than did the
calendar knowledge for ordering two distant past events, but even adolescents, whose depiction was highly stereotyped.
12-year-olds still used calendar knowledge inaccurately (Friedman The generalizability of these findings is limited by the small
et al., 1995, Experiment 1). Another group of researchers (Strube number of participants. This pattern of results has, however, been
& Weber, 1988) found a somewhat earlier development of land- confirmed in a study of knowledge about age-typical psychologi-
mark strategies that rely on knowledge of calendar cycles for cai and social development. Participants aged 4 to 17 years as-
ordering memories. Performance in ordering personal experiences signed 48 items concerning psychological traits, maturational char-
improved when seasons of the year were offered as landmarks in acteristics, and social events to one of eight life phases. Correct
the 8-year-olds, but not in the 5-and 9-year-olds. This indicated knowledge of characteristics of life phases increased with grade
that 5-year-olds could not make use of seasons for dating events, and age up to about age 13 (Schorsch, 1992). Similarly, written
whereas 9-year-olds spontaneously used seasons as landmarks for accounts of their lives by 9- to 10-year-olds evidenced the begin-
ordering recollective memories. Friedman (1993) suggested that nings of the use of normative life events for structuring a life (Juen,
further development of temporal understanding may depend on the 1997).
replacement of a listlike, sequential representation of the calendar On the basis of converging but sparse evidence, it appears that
by an imagelike representation of the days of the week and months the cultural concept of biography emerges in late childhood and
of the year in early to middle adolescence (see Friedman, 1986). early adolescence. We suggest that the cultural concept of biog-
The evidence reviewed here is limited by its cross-sectional raphy provides a basic and normative grid that can be used to
nature and by originating largely from only one laboratory. It does, select and arrange life events into coherent life narratives. This
however, indicate that although preschool children are able to tentative conclusion needs further empirical corroboration from
correctly remember events from specified times during the past studies focusing on late childhood and early adolescence and using
year, the use of conventional cyclical time structures begins only diverse methods such as life narratives, pairwise temporal ordering
at about age 8 and continues to be refined through mid- of normative life events, detection of abnormalities in sequences,
adolescence. Concerning the temporal ordering of events in life and training studies.
narratives, it remains unclear whether calendar knowledge is spe- If the ability for temporal sequencing of distant events and a
cificaily needed to order major distant life events. Alternatively, in cultural concept of biography emerge toward the end of childhood,
the absence of the ability to reconstruct calendar dates, events older children and preadolescents should be able to create skeletal
could be sequenced using conditional relationships (e.g., in order coherence in life narratives in terms of sequential order and nor-
to have had an accident at school, my first day at school must have mative content. The following two types of coherence, however,
already happened) or by reference to the cultural concept of transform a temporally and normatively sequenced list of events
biography. into an interpreted life story. We argue that although the types of
coherence reviewed thus far emerge in late childhood to early
Cultural Concept of Biography adolescence, the more cognitively sophisticated forms of coher-
ence (causal, thematic) develop only during adolescence.
As with temporal sequencing, little developmental research has
examined the acquisition of the cultural concept of biography. Causal Coherence
Available evidence suggests that a culturally normative sequence
of standard events to be included in biographies is acquired early We begin by presenting studies of the development of causal
in adolescence. Rosenthal (1995) reported that whereas younger coherence in shorter narratives and then provide a more extensive
children produce unconnected recountings of memorable events, review of the cognitive developments that support the ability to
young adolescents embed events in a conventional biographical establish global causal coherence in the life story. These include
structure that normatively orders the sequence of events such as the development of the person-concept that allows the explanation
birth, birth of siblings, school transitions, and geographical relo- of a variety of actions and events through reference to a charac-
cations. In one study (Strube, Gehringer, Ernst, & Knill, 1985), 46 teristic of the self and the cognitive developments that contribute
participants in three age groups described the probable life course to the ability to explain personal change and discontinuity.
Causal coherence in texts. An essential integrative .device in coherence in the life story. These often address competence more
adults' life narratives is establishing causal relationships between clearly.
various events and between past events and the present self. Explanations of actions. The more integrative one's self-
Research on the development of the causal structuring of nan'a- conception, the more one's characteristics can be used to explain
fives has relied on brief stories. A review of this literature (van den a variety of events and actions, thereby contributing to coherence
Broek, 1997) concluded that this focus on brief stories makes it in life narratives (for a review of the development of self, see
difficult to generalize these developments to the causal structuring Harter, 1999). Free descriptions of self and significant others made
of more complex narratives. However, even in developing local by children, adolescents, and young adults develop from physical,
coherence (within a story), adolescents and young adults are more concrete, o~ action-focused terms in early childhood to more
sophisticated than children. When telling the story of a boy's loss abstract and stable psychological trait descriptors in late childhood
and retrieval of a frog on the basis of a series of pictures (see and early adolescence (Bernstein, 1980; Hoffner & Cantor, 1985;
Berman & Slobin, 1994), young adults referred to the boy's Montemayor & Eisen, 1977; Secord & Peevers, 1974). The emer-
intentions and other states of mind more often than 9-year-olds and gence of the use of psychological trait descriptors in late child-
were more concerned with the pursuit of the central goal (Bamberg hood, however, has been questioned by researchers who report
& Damrad-Frye, 1991). A different study (van den Broek, 1989) their use even by preschoolers (Eder, Gerlach, & Perlmutter, 1987)
used a more complex story that contained three distinct but related and by studies on the development of dispositional trait attribu-
subepisodes, each with its own goal. Of the 8-, 11-, 14-, and tions and their use for predicting behavior (A. S. Feldman &
18-year-old participants, all groups but the 8-year-olds rated the Ruble, 1988; Ferguson, Olthof, Luiten, & Ruble, 1984). A problem
importance of sentences in accordance with how many interepi- with these latter studies is that they used an overgeneralized
sodic causal links they implied. When asked for reasons for spe- concept of trait. The use of trait words needs to be differentiated
cific actions, the three older age groups provided more answers according to their abstractness or distance from concrete behaviors
that linked episodes than did the 8-year-olds. In a similar vein, (Barenboim, 1985; Ruble & Dweck, 1995; Yuill, 1997a). Studies
Low and Durkin's (1998) study using narratives of a police story that claimed preschoolers have trait knowledge did not differenti-
with five video episodes showed no age differences between 6-, 8-, ate between the prediction of behavior based on using psycholog-
10-, and 12-year-olds in the frequency of implicit causal interepi- ical traits as causes versus that based on matching highly similar or
sode links when the story was presented in the canonical order. identical situations and behaviors or on matching behaviors in
However, when the episodes were shown in noncanonical order, terms of a general evaluation (Rholes, Newman, & Ruble, 1990).
interepisode causal links were established only by the two older Although preschool children clearly can make highly general
age groups. evaluations, they cannot think in terms of more abstract traits such
Clearly, a life story is much more extended and complex than as abilities. Older children, in contrast, can experimentally be
the situations or stories used in these studies. Description of a life induced to use either general evaluations or abstract traits (E.
requires not only local coherence within stories but also global Thompson, Boggiano, Costanzo, Matter, & Ruble, 1995; see also
coherence across the life. Given this, it seems probable that the Ruble & Dweck, 1995).
ability to create causal links between disparate stories-- A more refined description of the development of the person-
acknowledging differences while recognizing that all stories be- concept has resulted from the use of the Piagetian clinical inter-
long to the same individual's life--develops later than coherence view method with large samples of children, adolescents, and
within single stories. Preliminary evidence is provided by an young adults. Selman (1980) used hypothetical dilemmas, whereas
exploratory study of life narratives with a total of twelve 12-, 15-, Damon and Hart (1988) used open-ended questions concerning the
and 18-year-olds (Habermas & Paha, 1999). Mnemonic and com- participants themselves. The sequences of levels of development
binatorial task-requirements were reduced by providing partici- are quite similar, and both have been confirmed longitudinally.
pants with cards on which they noted major events from their lives Studies with three measurements over 2 (Damon & Hart, 1986)
and ordered them beforehand. Of all causally linked statements, or 3 years (Guruccharri & Selman, 1982) both reported high
those concerning actions or states extending up t o 1 month de- interrater reliability for modal level score and also confirmed the
creased with age, whereas those extending over longer time inter- unidirectionality of the developmental sequence. The correlation
vals increased with age, thus indicating an increase in global causal of Damon and Hart's levels with chronological age has also been
coherence. Explanations of actions by personality and references confirmed cross-culturally (Hart, Lucca-Irizarry, & Damon, 1986).
to developmental status for explaining past actions were present Here, we report only the basic descriptive characteristics of the
only in the two older groups. Explanations of personal disconti- levels of understanding of persons based on these two models
nuity and use of particular biographical experiences to explain (note that Damon and Hart collapsed Levels 0 and 1 into a single
actors' specific responses to situations were evident only in the level.)
18-year-olds. Expressions that related lasting change in attitude, Preschool children describe themselves and others in terms of
values, or habits to a specific biographical experience were also physical appearance and general evaluations such as good or nice
present only in the oldest age group. This study provides some (Level 0). Young schoolchildren describe people in terms of sim-
preliminary evidence for the adolescent emergence of causal co- ple feelings, preferences (cf. Yuill, 1997b), and specific abilities,
herence in life narratives. such as "She's good in math" (Level I). Older schoolchildren
These studies of causal coherence in text tapped performance systematically compare their own specific skills with a reference
level, not competence, because reasoning was not probed, chal- group. They describe personality as the sum of unrelated but
lenged, or optimized in any other way. We therefore turn to relatively stable habits and attitudes that generalize across multiple
examining studies of specific cognitive tools for creating causal actions and feelings (Level 2). In early to mid-adolescence a
psychological concept of personality develops that integrates a new situation. The majority of 13-year-olds abstracted one per-
variety of emotional and motivational states with ways of acting in sonal trait from a vignette and used it to predict the protagonist's
relationships. By organizing an array of characteristics into the behavior in a second situation. The majority of 16-year-olds suc-
unitary concept of an underlying trait, the notion of a consistent ceeded in abstracting two potentially contradictory traits and used
personality develops. The concept tends to be overgeneralized, both for predicting behavior. The majority of 19-year-olds also
however, such as characterizing someone as a nerd or a jerk (Level acknowledged mood as a situational force. Because participants'
3). In mid- to late adolescence the view of personality includes the explanations were not probed, results may somewhat overestimate
possibility of conflicts between various parts of personality and the the timing of the emergence of the underlying competence.
understanding that some parts of personality are not easily acces- In applying the general person-concept to oneself, one's own
sible to awareness. People may be further evaluated in the light of personality can be understood in ever more general and integrated
moral or philosophical belief systems (Level 4). terms with each developmental level attained. For example, across
The use of the clinical interview method (see Vinh-Bang, 1978) the five levels of development, a specific episode may respectively
for assessing social-cognitive developments in these studies offers be understood to reveal something about one' s personality in terms
two advantages. It provides evidence for the emergence of quali- of physical appearance, preferred activities, attitudes and habits,
tatively new forms of reasoning. It also offers researchers the the type of person one is, or, finally, in terms of complex multi-
opportunity to challenge responses so that participants are moti- layered intrapsychic processes and basic values. Even beyond that,
vated to use the most mature form of reasoning of which they are adolescents learn to combine personality with situational informa-
capable. This optimal performance may be interpreted as an indi- tion in explaining events and behaviors.
cator of actual social-cognitive competence. However, there are We have reviewed the development of the person-concept
two task demands inherent in these interviews. They require both across laboratories and methods to argue that the growing integra-
verbal abilities and the ability to reflect on and explicate reasoning tion of the person-concept in adolescence allows the individual to
processes (Chandler & Sokol, 1999). Although verbal abilities, create causal coherence in the life story by reference to a single or
because of advanced language development, should no longer be a a few central self-characteristics. The more general and integrated
restricting task demand in the adolescent age range, the emergence self-characteristics are, the greater the number and variety of
of the explicit, reflective use of specific qualitative forms of actions and events that may be explained with reference to this set
reasoning may be preceded by their implicit, prereflective use. of characteristics. The research presented indicates that it is only in
We therefore briefly review experimental studies of prereflec- early adolescence that the person-concept is developed enough to
tive use of forms of reasoning to show that they do support the allow the individual to explain actions across situations and across
results reported above. Experiments have demonstrated the devel- time by reference to central underlying psychological traits.
opment from Level 0 to Level 1, that is, from behavioral predic- Explanations of personal discontinuity. A coherent life narra-
tions based on physical appearance to predictions based on inten- tive must account for change and development over time. Thus, it
tions (Hoffner & Cantor, 1985), and from behavioral regularity to is essential to interrelate past and present selves by establishing
regularity of intentions and desires (Yuill & Pearson, 1998). That causal links between life circumstances or events and one's per-
the ability to explain self-presentational, deceptive motives for sonal development. Global causal coherence provides a diachronic
behavior (Level 2) emerges only in late childhood has also been understanding of how individuals remain themselves in spite of
shown experimentally (Banerjee & Yuill, 1999). To assess the change (i.e., maintain self-continuity) and a biographical under-
development of the self-concept in adolescence, Harter and Mon- standing of how previous experiences have shaped oneself. We
sour (1992) asked participants to relate descriptions of the self in review evidence from three areas demonstrating that causal rea-
different social contexts to each other. Fifteen-year-olds indicated soning about personal development emerges during adolescence:
more conflicts among self-attributes than either 13-year-olds or development of criteria for what constitutes personal continuity,
17-year-olds; they named slightly fewer conflicts than the middle development of the understanding of mechanisms of human de-
age group. This finding has been interpreted in terms of social- velopment, and development of an awareness of the significance of
cognitive development of the person-concept (Harter, Bresnick, the past for understanding the present.
Bouchey, & Whitesell, 1997). At Level 2, no general consistency To explain continuity in the face of change, children must first
is expected, whereas at Level 3, attributes that cannot be integrated learn criteria for defining personal change and continuity. A large
into a unitary self-concept are experienced as contradictory, which questionnaire study with 13- to 19-year-olds (Dreher & Dreher,
may explain the peak in perceived contradictoriness of self- 1991) failed to find specific age differences in conceptions of
attributes at age 15. The late-adolescent ability to integrate oppos- personal change. There was, however, a significant decrease with
ing traits (Level 4) lessens judgments of contradictoriness. Overall, age in the number of statements that conceived of change as a
these experimental studies support the developmental sequence of product, not a process. Thus, during adolescence, personal change
the person-concept shown in interview studies. is increasingly conceived of as a process. Studies that use more
Adolescents' emerging ability to explain a variety of behaviors developmentally refined content categories show more specific
in terms of enduring dispositions is reflected in their growing changes. For example, interview studies with children aged 6 to 9
tendency to combine situational with dispositional attributions (Guardo & Bohan, 1971) and 6 to 12 (Mohr, 1978) showed that the
(Blanchard-Fields & Norris, 1994). Following Case's (1985) the- conception of self-continuity develops from seeing only physical
ory of cognitive development, Marini and Case (1994) adminis- and external attributes as continuous to seeing behavioral and
tered five tasks of graded difficulty to participants aged 11 to 19 role-related activities as continuing over time (in late childhood),
years. Participants were asked to infer a protagonist's traits from to understanding that internal, psychological traits or processes
vignettes containing several situations and to predict behavior in a may show continuity (beginning in early adolescence).
Chandler and colleagues (Chandler, Boyes, Ball, & Hala, 1987) in mid- to late adolescence, personal stability is discussed in terms
have proposed the only specific developmental sequence that goes of core temperament (Selman, Lavin, Cooney, Jacobs, & Brion-
beyond childhood to describe how adolescents conceptualize how Meisels, 1979) and change is seen as a process of conscious
their present self has evolved from their past self. At Level 1, the trade-offs between basic values (Damon & Hart, 1988; see also
self is conceived of as a mosaic of attributes, and continuity is Blasi & Milton, 1991).
based on a sufficient number of attributes being stable. At Level 2, A third facet of the understanding of human development is the
apparent change is seen as not necessarily indicating change in the recognition of the significance of the personal past for present
introspective self. At Level 3, personality change is conceived of personality. This diachronic tendency (Montangero, 1996) in-
as occurring only in the surface manifestations of the underlying volves viewing an event in an extended temporal context. Al-
stable attributes. Past and present self are considered to be func- though it relies on a basic cognitive competence, the diachronic
tionally continuous. At Level 4, a developmental conception of tendency is a performance characteristic. In one study, a series of
continuity frames the past self as a necessary precondition for, and four videotaped social interactions of a target person was presented
basis of, the present self without requiring any element to remain on one day, and an additional scene was presented one day later.
identical over time. At Level 5, self-continuity is understood as Whereas a group of 9- to 21-year-olds based their judgment of the
existing only in the consistency of retrospective autobiographical target person's character on information from all five episodes, 5-
interpretation'andreconstruction of one's life story. We expect that to 6-year-olds did so only when the behavior in the final episode
the level of abstractness of the concept of personal continuity contradicted prior behaviors. Otherwise, these younger children
determines how successfully discontinuities can be rendered con- based their judgment exclusively on the actor's behavior in the
sistent with a sense of personal identity through time. final episode (Rholes & Ruble, 1986).
Reasoning about personal continuity was elicited in interviews In two similar studies with individuals ranging from age 8 to
with 50 adolescents aged 13 to 18 who responded to fictional young adulthood, participants were asked to describe three draw-
accounts of personal discontinuity. Levels of understanding of ings depicting different dramatic events. Across adolescence, there
personal discontinuity (1 to 5) correlated substantially with per- was an increase in the number of references to events prior to or
formance on standard Piagetian tasks (Chandler et al., 1987). In a following the depicted event (Montangero & Pons, 1995). In
second study with 29 adolescents aged t3 to 18, conceptions of several studies (Gnepp, 1989; Gnepp & Gould, 1985), participants
continuity correlated only moderately with age (Chandler & Ball, were told or shown stories in which the first event might reason-
1991; cf. Ball & Chandler, 1989). This may have resulted from the ably influence the protagonist's appraisal of the second event.
narrow age range studied. Both studies were hampered by small Asked to predict or explain the protagonist's reaction to the second
sample size and restricted age range. event, 10-year-olds, but not 5- and 7-year-olds, were able to extract
Beyond understanding personal continuity and change, bridging personalized information from the first event and apply it to the
discontinuity also requires an understanding of how and why second event when asked to do so. Compared with adults, children
changes come about. To date, there has been little work on the in all age groups less frequently spontaneously appreciated the
ontogenesis of the understanding of developmental mechanisms. relevance of prior experience to people's appraisals of current
The only theory of reasoning about developmental processes has events.
focused on a transition between ages 8 and 12 (Montangero, 1996). When extended to the temporal frame of a life, the diachronic
Using a variety of pictorial and verbal material representing dif- tendency results in understanding individuals from a biographical
ferent points in a transformative process, followed by an interview perspective. Research on the person-concept shows that in early to
using Piaget's clinical method, this series of studies described the mid-adolescence individuals begin to notice the influence of long-
development of the understanding of physical, biological, and term experiences, such as the character of an individual's parents
human transformations. or the way the individual was brought up, on the formation of
Reasoning about developmental mechanisms moves from a personality (Selman et al., 1979). Still later in adolescence, indi-
quantitative to a qualitative conception of change: from explaining viduals begin to understand their present actions and life choices in
change using external or maturational forces to using internal terms of their individual life experiences. In an extensive interview
causes, to combining internal and external causes. This has been study with 14- to 22-year-olds on conceptions of why people
demonstrated, for example, in a study on children's understanding commit suicide, only older adolescents spontaneously related sui-
of the development of drawing skills (Tryphon & Montangero, cidal motives to the subject's life history (Drbert & Nunner-
1992). Children aged 6 to 11 years were presented 12 pictures of Winkler, 1994). When summarizing a story, 19- and 22-year-olds,
human figures created by 4- to 12-year-old children. After having but not 14- and 17-year-olds, mentioned personal long-term goals
ordered the pictures according to the estimated age of their cre- of the protagonists (Beach & Wendler, 1987).
ators, participants were asked why drawing skills changed with In other research, comprehension of an orally presented story of
age. With the respondents' own age, responses changed from an adolescent's dilemma was studied in three age groups (10 to 12
"because of their age" to "because they have been taught to draw," years, 15 to 19 years, 26 to 49 years; C. Feldman, Bruner, Kalmar,
to developments taking place within the person concerning, for & Renderer, 1993). Presentation was repeatedly interrupted to
example, motor skills or imagination, as well as references to check for comprehension and interpretation. A summary of the
practice or development. story was requested at the end. Preadolescents interpreted
We know of no ~Iudies concerning the understanding of the thoughts, motives, and intentions of protagonists exclusively in
causes and mechanisms of the development of personality. The terms of their present roles, desires, and options for action. Older
results reviewed from studies with other foci, however, are sug- adolescents extended their view by interpreting the protagonist's
gestive of adolescent developments in this area. They indicate that behaviors, using the history of the protagonist's life as relevant
information for inferring present motivations. Generalizability of only 25% of 10-year-olds, were able to provide adequate state-
results is, however, bruited by the small sample size and lack of ments of the main theme of two complex biographical stories
standardized coding. (Williams, 1993). Evidence of continuous development of the-
Summary. Research on the development of causal coherence matic abihties across adolescence is provided by a study in which
in texts rarely includes adolescent or adult participants. The texts 16- to 19-year-olds provided more gist statements when asked to
that are used as stimuli are restricted in their temporal range and summarize a biographical narrative than a group of 12- to 15-year-
complexity. Therefore, these studies provide evidence of basic olds (Adams, 1991).
building blocks for the understanding of global causal coherence in In sum, the abihty to extract the central theme of multiepisode
life narratives. Unfortunately, the one study showing the develop- stories gradually develops after age 10, depending on the com-
ment of causal coherence in actual life narratives across adoles- plexity of the story. Life narratives, however, do not have the
cence had only a small number of participants. clear-cut hierarchical goal structure that stories do. Therefore,
Research provides strong evidence of the emergence of quali- thematic integration of life narratives requires active interpretation
tatively new forms of the person-concept in adolescence. This is in addition to the ability to capture the gist or superordinate goal.
substantiated by multiple methods and attempts to differentiate Interpreting stories. The spontaneous tendency to interpret
mere performance from competence. In contrast, research on the texts develops later in adolescence than does the ability to provide
development of reasoning about personal continuity and change in a mere summary of the plot of fictional stories. When asked for
adolescence is sparse. The studies by Chandler and colleagues reasons why they liked or disliked the stories, no 9-year-old, but
(Chandler & Ball, 1991; Chandler et al., 1987) and by C. Feldman 20% of the 13-year-olds and 80% of the 17-year-olds, provided
et al. (1993) are promising, given that they aim at tapping quali- interpretations of the point of the story (Applebee, 1978). Other
tative differences in development. In-depth studies of emerging studies suggest that metaphorical interpretations of stories are even
notions of continuity and mechanisms of change in human devel- more frequent after adolescence (Adams, 1991; Adams, Smith,
opment would further elucidate the cognitive means for construct- Nyquist, & Perlmutter, 1997; James, Burke, Austin, & Hulme,
ing a life story in adolescence. 1998; Jepson & Labouvie-Vief, 1992). Because these studies re-
In short, the developing abilities we have reviewed serve as port on performance levels in interpreting stories, results indicate
cognitive tools for creating global causal coherence in the life story only that the spontaneous tendency to interpret stories emerges in
in adolescence. They allow integration of past events and personal mid-adolescence and continues to develop through at least the
changes into one's current view of life through causally linking early adult years. It cannot be ruled out, however, that the com-
later to earlier selves. petence to interpret stories may be achieved earlier. Thus, studies
on the development of the ability to interpret stories in late child-
Thematic Coherence hood and early adolescence are needed.
The ability to summarize and the ability to provide interpreta-
Thematic integration of a life narrative relies on the develop- tion are involved in creating global coherence through finding
ment of three simpler abilities: the ability to summarize multiepi- themes in one's own life. One salient difference between inter-
sode stories, the ability to interpret stories, and an awareness that preting a text and interpreting a life, however, is that the latter is
inferential processes are employed in autobiographical remember- constrained not only by claims of consistency and meaningfulness
ing and reasoning. The reviewed evidence suggests that these skills but also by truth claims. To be able to interpret a life, the individ-
develop during adolescence. ual must have some awareness that a life story is not just a question
Summarizing stories. The tendency to spontaneously summa- of knowing facts and that facts can be understood and interpreted
rize stories increases across adolescence. In one study, children from a variety of perspectives (e.g., self vs~ others, present self vs.
recounted the aforementioned frog story based on a series of past selves). This awareness implies realizing that one's current
pictures. None of the 3- to 7-year-olds, only 13% of the 9- to version may be interpreted by relating it to possible alternative
11-year-olds, and 50% of the adults spontaneously produced a accounts. The understanding that a life must be interpreted is based
summary statement specifying the overall goal of the story (Ber- on the development of an awareness of inferential processes.
man, 1988). In another study, 8- to 12-year-olds were presented a Awareness of inferential processes. The effort an individual
series of drawings depicting stages of the life cycle of a person and invests in interpreting and reinterpreting his or her life depends on
asked "What does all that represent?" Only from age 10 onwards that person' s understanding of the sources of knowledge about the
did a majority of participants integrate the pictures using a single facts and meaning of the personal past. If children take the re-
phrase (e.g., "It's the life of a man"). Younger children described membered facts and events of life as self-evident truths, then
a single picture or several pictures one after the other (Montangero interpretation of life will not be seen as necessary or even possible.
& Parrat-Dayan, 1992). Awareness of the inferential aspects of mental activity begins to
When participants are explicitly requested to provide summaries emerge, in a very basic form, around age 8, when children differ-
of multiepisode stories, results even more clearly indicate that this entiate valid from invalid deductive inferences and guessing in
summarizing ability develops only in adolescence. Choosing judging the presence of a hidden toy (Pillow, Hill, Boyce, & Stein,
among three titles for the three subepisodes of the "Jimmy wants 2000) and start to realize that ambiguous situations may be under-
a bike----Jimmy wants money--Jimmy wants a new paper route" stood in a variety of ways by different people (Carpendale &
story, 11-, 14-, and 18-year-olds preferred the title referring to the Chandler, 1996). Studies on the development of more complex
superordinate goal of getting a bike, whereas 8-year-olds did not epistemological reasoning demonstrate that an understanding of
differentiate between these three rifles (van den Broek, Naslund, the necessity to interpret evidence (instead of simply accepting it)
Ivers, & Verduin, 1996). Similarly, over 75% of 14-year-olds, but begins to emerge in mid-adolescence and continues to develop
through young adulthood (Boyes & Chandler, 1992; for a review, earliest and mean ages at which levels were reached were some-
see Hofer & Pintrich, 1997). what higher than in studies using the previously mentioned ill-
On the basis of K. Fischer's (1980) theory of cognitive devel- defined problems (see, e.g., Kitchener et al., 1993).
opment, the most elaborate developmental theory in this area Thus, epistemological reasoning in mid-adolescence ranges
describes seven developmental levels of reflective judgment from naive realism to skepticism when measured using either
(Kitchener & Fischer, 1990). It predicts that individuals move ill-defined problems or conflicting accounts. Even older adoles-
from taking truth statements for granted in late childhood and early cents rarely reach levels of epistemological reasoning at which
adolescence (Levels 1 to 3) to an understanding that knowledge is varying perspectives are systematically combined to reach a well-
uncertain in mid-adolescence (Level 4), to a conception of truth as argued version of probable truth. The studies reported in this
depending on context and on the integration of a variety of sources subsection used appropriate interview techniques, probing for the
of information in late adolescence and early adulthood (Levels 5 to highest level of reasoning on a variety of tasks with several
7). On the basis of interviews, Kitchener and colleagues have different samples. Unfortunately, however, we know of no studies
accumulated cross-sectional and longitudinal evidence for the se- on epistemological reasoning with younger participants or with
quentiality of these levels and their developmental timing (for a more differentiated adolescent age groups that could demonstrate
review, see King & Kitchener, 1994). more clearly the lower age boundaries of skeptical and integrated
For example, a cross-sectional study (ages 14 to 28) assessed epistemological reasoning.
reflective judgment by using the theory's standard interview: pos- The emerging awareness of the inferential and constructive
ing seven unprobed questions for each of two ill-defined problems nature of knowledge in mid- to late adolescence is also confLrmed
such as the safety of chemical additives to food. In addition, a by studies using other methods. When retelling the frog story
subgroup saw statements that were prototypic for each level, and mentioned above, young adults spontaneously used hedges (e.g.,
their understanding of the statements was probed. All participants probably, kind of, looks like) four times as often as 9-year-olds,
completed the standard interview again after 2 weeks. Maximal marking their recognition of the distance between the original
level of performance in the standard task using unprobed questions story and their remembered and interpreted version of it (Bamberg
at Time 1 corresponded to mean level of performance at Time 2 in & Damrad-Frye, 1991). In an exploratory study of life narratives
the group that had practiced reflective judgment by discussing (12-, 15-, and 18-year-olds; Habermas & Paha, 1999), the percent-
prototypical statements. This cross-validates the interpretation of age of expressions of uncertainty concerning one's explanations
the maximum score gained in the standard interview and the mean increased with age. Expressions of uncertainty regarding other
performance score after practice as both being indicators of com- aspects of the narrative (e.g., timing, descriptions) did not vary
petence. Maximal level of reflective judgment correlated highly with age. This indicates a specific increase in the awareness of
with age (King & Kitchener, 1994) even when controlling for inferential and interpretative processes involved in telling a life
verbal ability. Maximal reasoning at Level 5 first emerged at story.
age 15 and was demonstrated by over half of the participants in The lower age boundary of knowledge about inferential mech-
each age group from age 18 onwards. Maximal reasoning at anisms is seen clearly in a study of the psychological organization
Level 6 first emerged at age 17 and was used by over half of the of mental verbs. Nine- and 11-year-olds and adults of unspecified
participants from age 21 onwards (Kitchener, Lynch, Fischer, & age were presented several scenarios and a list of 17 mental verbs
Wood, 1993). (e.g., thinking, remembering, knowing) and asked to indicate at
Awareness in mid-adolescence of the uncertainty of knowledge least three verbs describing mental activities possible in each
and of the necessity for using inference and interpretation has also scenario. Multidimensional scaling for each age group showed that
been studied with regard to the ability to reconstruct the historical 9-year-olds' responses resulted in a cluster of verbs concerning
(see also Seixas, 1996; Wineburg, 1996) and the personal past. information input, 11-year-olds showed an additional cluster of
Adolescents develop an understanding that event sequences can be verbs concerning memory processes, and adults' responses also
constructed and interpreted by taking multiple perspectives into produced a third cluster of verbs concerning constructive informa-
account (Kuhn, 1991). Advanced historical reasoning involves tion processing (i.e., estimate, guess, reason, think, question).
resolving conflicting accounts by weighing the credibility of Thus, an awareness of uncertainty in knowing and remembering
sources, examining possible biases in information, and interpreting seems to emerge across adolescence (Schwanenflugel, Henderson,
the context in which information was gained. Developmental & Fabricius, 1998). Because of the composition of age groups, the
trends from mid-adolescence to middle adulthood are apparent in study does not provide evidence on the precise timing of this
studies in which participants were presented multiple sources of development during adolescence.
historical evidence (Shemilt, 1980, cited in Wineburg, 1996) and Summary. The research reviewed in this section on thematic
conflicting accounts of highly emotional interpersonal conflicts coherence demonstrates that the ability to surnrnarize multiepisode
(Blanchard-Fields, 1986). In the latter study, three age groups (14 stories and an awareness that inferential processes are used to
to 16, 20 to 25, and 30 to 46 years) were presented discrepant interpret and reconstruct the past begin to develop in mid-
accounts of a fictional historical scenario (taken from Kuhn, Pen- adolescence. Studies on the emergence of the ability to interpret
nington, & Leadbeater, 1983; Leadbeater & Kuhn, 1989) and complex multiepisode stories are lacking, but the spontaneous
discrepant accounts of fictional personal scenarios. Participants tendency to interpret stories also appears to emerge in
used the discrepant accounts to construct their version of what they mid-adolescence.
thought probably had happened. Probed responses were coded The ability to recognize and combine multiple sources of infor-
using Kitchener's developmental sequence. The expected devel- mation makes it possible to move beyond seeing past events as
opmental sequence was thereby confirmed cross-sectionally. The fixed. We argue that the ability to take situational factors into
account (e.g., differences between one's past and present life To test whether we have selected the four most important types
situations) and to see differences between perspectives (e.g., be- of coherence that contribute to a life story's overall global coher-
tween one's own and other's perspectives) allows for the creation ence, it is necessary to develop standardized measures of these
of thematic coherence between versions of the past and the present. types of coherence for life narratives that may then also be applied
to autobiographical reasoning in more partial narratives. This
involves constructing a taxonomy of specific linguistic and con-
Cognitive Tools: Summary
ceptual means for creating the four types of coherence. It should be
We have reviewed studies of social-cognitive developments based on linguistic models of coherence-relations but must also
that should contribute to the ability to create four types of coher- rely on psychological concepts that are more specific to life
ence in the life story: temporal sequencing, cultural concept of narratives, such as the concept of explanations of personal discon-
biography, causal coherence, and thematic coherence. This body of finuity. The resulting taxonomy should be validated in several
research provides converging evidence that a variety of social- ways, for example, by asking observers to rate the four types of
cognitive abilities arises in adolescence. There are differences in coherence, as well as overall global coherence of each life narra-
the timing of the development of these cognitive tools. Temporal five. These ratings could be then compared to ratings of how good
sequencing of distant experiences begins to develop during the or typical a life narrative appears to be.
grade school years, followed by the acquisition of a cultural Direct tests of the emergence of the life story in adolescence are
concept of biography by about age 10. A wealth of studies points needed. Methods should be used that exclude explanations of low
to the emergence in early adolescence of an integrated person- performance other than lack of competence to create a life story.
concept that can be used to integrate diverse episodes and thereby We would not expect to find an absolute lower threshold for the
produce causal coherence. Preliminary evidence also suggests the development of the life story. Rather, it should be of interest to
emergence in mid- to late adolescence of biographical conceptions delineate the gradual emergence of the life story across adoles-
of how individuals change due to life experiences while neverthe- cence and early adulthood. The focus would be on identifying
less remaining the same individual. The ability to thematically possible developmental sequences of the means to produce global
interpret complex texts and an awareness of the necessity to coherence-relations (temporal, cultural concept of biography,
interpret past events begin to develop in mid- to late adolescence causal, thematic) between age 10 and adulthood.
and may continue into adulthood. These cognitive tools are nec- Studying the development of the competence to create a life
essary for autobiographical reasoning and thereby for the emer- story requires the use of diverse methods to rule out explanations
gence of the life story. of low levels of performance, such as suboptimal motivation or
extraneous social or cognitive task-demands. The condition of
Conclusion directly asking children and adolescents to narrate their life could
be complemented by conditions in which motivation is enhanced
We have outlined a conceptual framework for the development by, for example, offering a reward or having a puppet narrate its
of the life story in adolescence to fill the gap between research on life story. Other tasks could reduce demands on memory and
the development of autobiographical remembering in childhood demands for combinatorial reasoning by providing written or
and research on adults' autobiographical remembering and re- graphic representations of parts of the life to be arranged and
counting of their lives. Our focus was on two aspects of the life manipulated physically as a basis for narrating.
story: life narratives and autobiographical reasoning. We defined ff children or adolescents indeed fall to produce life narratives
the life story with reference to four types of global coherence in or specific types of global coherence, it could still be that they do
life narratives and discussed the specific forms of autobiographical have the concept of a life story or the specific type of coherence in
reasoning by which this coherence is achieved. We identified question but are unable to use it for actively narrating their life.
general social-cognitive abilities that serve as cognitive tools for Thus, life narratives of other persons could be presented, possibly
autobiographical reasoning when they are applied to a specific by puppets or video figures. Participants would be asked to retell
object, a human life. As far as is possible with the existing the life narratives, rate the importance of their parts, or recognize
research, we have lent both theoretical and empirical support to the them. Differential quality of responses for parts that are essential
emergence of the life story in adolescence. To highlight the po- or nonessential for the four types of coherence would indicate a
tential of this approach, we now outline research strategies for passive understanding of global coherence in life narratives. Al-
studying the development of the life story and also suggest ways in ternatively, life narratives of varying degrees of coherence--for
which the life story approach may enrich other areas of research. instance, life narratives produced by children, adolescents, and
adults--could be rated with regard to their quality by children,
Research Needed to Substantiate the Development adolescents, adults, and adult experts.
of the Life Story Even if children or adolescents fail to recognize coherence
relations in life narratives under these conditions, one could still
Our review of research has identified major gaps in our under- argue that they fall only because they have not learned the specific
standing of adolescent development. Further direct empirical evi- concept of a life story and that they would be able to construct or
dence is needed for the emergence of the life story in adolescence. recognize a life story if they only knew the concept. To counter
Three areas of research are .particularly important for substantiat- this argument of a deficit in knowledge instead of in cognitive
ing the proposed framework of the life story: characteristics of the abilities requires teaching and training children and adolescents
life story in adulthood, its emergence during adolescence, and its what a life narrative is (for ethical reasons, only others' or fictional
cognitive-developmental preconditions. life narratives could be used). If they were unable to learn the
762 HABERMAS AND BLUCK~
concept, this would demonstrate the lack of the necessary cogni- their integration into the life story through autobiographical
tive tools. An even more stringent test would restrict the task to the reasoning.
more partial ability for autobiographical reasoning. Applying Pi- Clinical research could also profit from the life story approach.
aget's method of clinical interviewing, autobiographical reason- Measures of coherence in fife narratives and autobiographical
ing--for example, about biographical reasons for specific signif- reasoning may allow more specific tests of the dissociative and
icant events, decisions, or personal changes (see Heatherton & fragmenting effects of trauma on memory (see, e.g., Holman &
Nichols, 1994)---could be elicited. Counter-suggestions would Silver, 1998, Study 3; I. Klein & Janoff-Bulman, 1995; Suedfeld,
serve to differentiate rote answers from active reasoning. Fell, & Krell, 1998; van der Kolk & Fisler, 1995; cf. Pillemer,
Finally, research on cognitive-developmental preconditions of 1998). Research on process in psychotherapy could benefit from
the emergence of the life story requires relating measures of more specific methods for identifying processes that may involve
coherence in life narratives to multiple measures of the proposed autobiographical reasoning, such as insight (Bucci, 1997; Mer-
cognitive tools. A specific skill would be interpreted as a devel- genthaler, 1996; for the theoretical background, see Cohler &
opmental precondition only if it emerged before or concurrently Freeman, 1993; Schafer, 1983) and levels of experiencing (M. H.
with the corresponding coherence-relation in a life narrative or in Klein, Mathieu-Coghlan, & Kiesler, 1986; Sherman, 1994). Re-
autobiographical reasoning. This specification underlines that the search in abnormal psychology may benefit from a more text-
proposed developmental preconditions do not concern overall based and life story-related definition of the diagnostic criterion of
global coherence but are each related to a specific type of global incoherence for borderline personality disorder (Kernberg et al.,
coherence, resulting in a developmental sequence of cognitive 1981) and attachment-status (Oppenheim & Waters, 1995) and
prerequisites and specific elements that contribute to that type of from studying formal properties of life narratives to better under-
global coherence. stand specific psychological disorders such as depression (From-
holt et al., 1995; Hambleton, Russell, & Wandrei, 1996; Luborsky,
Implications f o r Other Fields o f Research 1990).
Finally, Neisser (1988) has suggested that the life story may
Despite the popular appeal of the concept of the life story, its provide an explanation of the reminiscence bump. This term de-
usefulness hinges on demonstrating that it can contribute to the notes the relative overrepresentation of the second and third de-
understanding of other psychological concepts and processes and cades of life in the distribution of memories of adults over age 35
inspire the development of new measures. Though many other (Rubin, Rahhal, &Poon, 1998; Rubin, Wetzler, & Nebes, 1986).
research areas exist, in concluding, we point to three in particular It is during these years of adolescence and postadolescence that the
that may profit from our conception of the life story: autobiograph- life story is formed, and the most comprehensive way to express
ical reasoning in the context of coping with trauma and transitions, identity is through the life story. We suggest that the life story
clinical diagnosis and psychotherapeutic processes, and the orga- contains many references to this transitional age period because it
nization of autobiographical memory. is both the time of greatest normative personal discontinuity and
Diverse research areas involving autobiographical remembering the time when the life story is first constructed and therefore most
in adulthood could be enriched by differentiating more simple intensively rehearsed. Put differently, adolescence is the period of
forms of remembering from active autobiographical reasoning that life in which many of the adult individual's self-defining charac-
contributes to constructing coherence in life. The necessity to teristics originate. Many characteristics are therefore anchored in
construct or reconstruct the life story is most likely triggered by episodes from that time. An additional argument for the role of the
major challenges to identity (Conway & Haque, in press; Schrauf life story in creating the reminiscence bump is suggested by the
& Rubin, 1998). These include transitions, traumatic experiences, finding that the bump is more pronounced when memories are
and other major life events. Two constructs related to autobio- retrieved intentionally (not in response to cue words) and when
graphical remembering--integrative reminiscing (Watt & Wong, significant memories are elicited (Fromholt et al., 1995; Fromholt
1991), or identity-related reminiscing (Webster, 1993), and the & Larsen, 1991; Robinson & Taylor, 1998).
search for meaning (see, e.g., Silver, Boon, & Stones, 1 9 8 3 ) -
have been found to increase during or following major life events
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Psychological Bulletin Copyright 2000 by the American Psychological Association, Inc.

2000, Vol. 126, No. 5, 748-769 0033-2909/00/$5.00 DOI: 10.10371/0033-2909.126.5.74S

Getting a Life: The Emergence of the Life Story in Adolescence

Tilmann Habermas and Susan Bluck

Autobiographical Remembering in Childhood Scr/pts

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