I like you better when you are coherent. Narrating autobiographical memories in a coherent manner has a positive impact on listeners' social evaluations

Reduced speech coherence in psychosis-related social media forum posts

The extraction of linguistic markers from social media posts, which are indicative of the onset and course of mental disorders, offers great potential for mental healthcare. In the present study, we extracted over one million posts from the popular social media platform Reddit to analyze speech coherence, which reflects formal thought disorder and is a characteristic feature of schizophrenia and associated psychotic disorders. Natural language processing (NLP) models were used to perform an automated quantification of speech coherence. We could demonstrate that users who are active on forums geared towards disorders with a higher degree of psychotic symptoms tend to show a lower level of coherence. The lowest coherence scores were found in users of forums on dissociative identity disorder, schizophrenia, and bipolar disorder. In contrast, a relatively high level of coherence was detected in users of forums related to obsessive-compulsive disorder, anxiety, and depression. Users of forums on posttraumatic stress disorder, autism, and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder exhibited medium-level coherence. Our findings provide promising first evidence for the possible utility of NLP-based coherence analyses for the early detection and prevention of psychosis on the basis of posts gathered from publicly available social media data. This opens new avenues for large-scale prevention programs aimed at high-risk populations.

The Stories We Tell Influence the Support We Receive: Examining the Reception of Support-Seeking Messages on Reddit

Although social support facilitates coping and recovering from stressful life events, people do not always get the support that they need. Prior research suggests that the way one talks about stressful events to others may influence the support they receive. Given that people are increasingly relying on online communities for social support, this study adopted a person-centered approach (latent profile analysis) to examine how narrative variables related to the motivational themes, emotional content, and organizational structure of randomly sampled support-seeking messages (N = 495) posted on Reddit (r/Anxiety and r/Depression) influenced the quantity (number of comments and post score) and quality (type of support in comments) of support that they received. We identified five distinct narrative profiles of support-seeking posts, which in turn differentially predicted the quality, but not quantity, of social support people received. While commenters provided high levels of emotional support to all forms of posts, we found that coherence was an important determinant of esteem support. A combination of coherence, as well as agency and affective tone, were important determinants of instrumental, informational, and network support. The ways in which one talks about their problems influence the way others support them.

A validation of the Dutch version of the Awareness of Narrative Identity Questionnaire (ANIQ-NL)

Individuals build a narrative identity through the construction of an internalised, unfolding life story based on significant autobiographical memories. The current study validated a Dutch version of the Awareness of Narrative Identity Questionnaire (ANIQ-NL), which assesses how aware individuals are of having a narrative identity as well as their perception of the global coherence within their autobiographical memories, specifically, in terms of temporal ordering, causal connections and thematic integration. The questionnaire was administered to 541 adults (65.1% female, Mage = 34.09, SDage = 15.04, age range = 18-75). The results of a confirmatory factor analysis provided evidence for a four-factor structure, consisting of awareness and the three coherence subscales. The factor loadings of the items varied between .67 and .96. Moreover, the ANIQ-NL subscales showed good to excellent internal consistency, with Cronbach's alphas ranging from .86 to .96. Furthermore, higher levels of perceived autobiographical memory coherence were found to be significantly correlated to lower levels of depression, anxiety, and stress symptoms. The ANIQ-NL was determined to be a valid and reliable tool to measure narrative identity awareness and perceived narrative coherence. Future research could utilise the ANIQ-NL to further investigate the role of narrative identity in psychological well-being.

Autobiographical memory and psychopathology: Is memory specificity as important as we make it seem?

Several decades of research have established reduced autobiographical memory specificity, or overgeneral memory, as an important cognitive factor associated with the risk for and maintenance of a range of psychiatric diagnoses. In measuring this construct, experimenters code autobiographical memories for the presence or absence of a single temporal detail that indicates that the remembered event took place on a single, specific, day (Last Thursday when I rode bikes with my son), or multiple days (When I rode bikes with my son). Studies indicate that the specificity of memories and the amount of other episodic detail that they include (e.g., who, what, and where) are related and may rely on the same neural processes to elicit their retrieval. However, specificity and detailedness are nonetheless separable constructs: imperfectly correlated and differentially associated with current and future depressive symptoms and other associated intrapersonal (e.g., rumination) and interpersonal (e.g., social support) outcomes. The ways in which the details of our memories align with narrative themes (i.e., agency, communion, identity) and the coherence with which these details are presented, are also emerging as important factors associated with psychopathology. The temporal specificity of autobiographical memories may be important, but other memory constructs warrant further attention in research and theory, especially given the associations, and dependencies, between each of these constructs. Researchers in this area must consider carefully whether their research questions necessitate a focus on autobiographical memory specificity or whether a more inclusive analysis of other autobiographical memory features is necessary and more fruitful. This article is categorized under: Psychology > Memory.

Reconciling a phenomenological with a functional approach to memory: narrative coherence and its social function

To date, the phenomenological and functional aspects of autobiographical memory have by and large been studied separately. This is quite remarkable, given that both can inform each other, and that investigating their interaction can add to the understanding of the (in)adaptivity of certain memory characteristics for our well-being. In other words, examining how particular features of autobiographical memory are adept or inept at serving specific functions, could help us to better comprehend and explain relations between memory and psychological well-being. We discuss previous attempts to integrate phenomenology with functionality and formulate three main directions for future research based on the current state of the art. The directions concern (1) focusing on functionality (adaptivity) and not merely on the use of memories in phenomenological work, (2) attention for the bidirectionality of the relation between phenomenology and functionality, and (3) the addition of narrative constructs like coherence to the traditional range of phenomenological features. We will illustrate our directions for the reintegration of phenomenology with functionality through the social function of coherent autobiographical memories. This framework could help to stimulate future empirical studies and pave the road for new clinical interventions to improve psychological well-being.

Reasons to remember: A functionalist view on the relation between memory and psychopathology

Memory is under investigation as one of the core mechanisms of psychopathology. The traditional cognitive view of memory as a stable structure with a range of set characteristics can be complemented with a perspective that considers remembering as a behaviour that varies fluidly across contexts. Remembering may serve adaptation to the environment by fulfilling a directive function, a self-function and a social function. A failure to fulfil these functions may be a risk factor for psychopathology. Implications of the discussed functionalist perspective include the importance of reinforcing adaptive ways of remembering during early development, the possibility of treating maladaptive ways of remembering through contextual interventions and the added ecological validity of using ambulatory assessment methods.

Shared event memory in aging: Across-participants similarity of vividness judgements decreases with age

When they remember the same events, humans recollect common episodic traces. For making vividness judgements, older adults rely less than young adults on retrieved episodic details. Here, we examined the similarity of the subjective experience of remembering and the associated memory content across participants and we investigated age-effects. Young and older adults studied pictures associated with labels. At retrieval, participants judged the vividness of their memories and recalled pictures details. We examined the similarity of vividness judgements and memory recall across-participants. Across-participants similarity in vividness judgements was higher in young than in older adults, while no age-difference in the similarity of the richness of memory recall between participants was found. Together, these findings suggest that older adults' vividness ratings are less similar from one participant to another than those of young adults, which may be explained by how older adults use memory details to frame their sense of memory vividness.

An Investigation of the Coherence of Oral Narratives: Associations With Mental Health, Social Support and the Coherence of Written Narratives

Research Questions

In a first research question, we examined whether the relations that are generally observed between the coherence of written autobiographical narratives and outcomes of mental health and social support, can be replicated for the coherence of oral narratives. Second, we studied whether the coherence of oral narratives is related to the coherence of written narratives.

Methods

Pearson correlations and t-tests were calculated on data of two separate studies to examine the research questions.

Results

First, only thematic coherence of oral narratives was significantly, although moderately, negatively associated to symptoms of depression, anxiety and negative social interactions. Second, the coherence of oral narratives was higher than the coherence of written narratives. Only the thematic coherence of oral narratives was positively associated with thematic and total coherence of written narratives. Furthermore, correlations between written and oral narratives were stronger for negative narratives as compared to positive narratives.

Discussion

The ability to elaborate emotionally and make meaning out of important life events in oral narratives is, to a certain extent, related to better mental health and more social support. Furthermore, thematic coherence may be a relatively stable feature of individuals' narrative styles that is reflected in narratives of different modalities. Nonetheless, these topics need to be further researched to overcome present limitations.

How am I going to tell you this? The relations between social anxiety and narrative coherence

Recently, evidence has been increasing that individuals who are able to narrate coherently about their autobiographical memories, receive more positive social feedback, have higher-quality social relationships and are overall less likely to suffer from internalising psychopathology, like depression and anxiety. However, the relation between narrative coherence and social anxiety, in particular, has not been topic of research until now. This is remarkable, since the concern about negative evaluations by others in social situations is at the core of social anxiety. In the present experimental study (N = 68), we investigated in a two-by-two design how trait and state social anxiety are related to narrative coherence, as well as possible underlying mechanisms. In our study, neither trait nor state social anxiety, nor their interaction had the expected detrimental effect on narrative coherence. However, trait differences in the proposed mechanisms of social anxiety were in line with the literature. Results showed that trait social anxiety and thematic narrative coherence were indirectly negatively related, via the intervening effects of an increased internal focus on anxiety cues, an excessive external focus on negative social evaluation, larger working memory load, more rumination and more depressive symptoms. Limitations and recommendations for future research are addressed.

Be coherent and become heard: The multidimensional impact of narrative coherence on listeners' social responses

Previous research has suggested that sharing autobiographical memories in a coherent manner has a beneficial impact on consequent social reactions of listeners. In this experimental study, we were able to replicate earlier findings by demonstrating that listeners (N = 107) showed significantly more willingness to interact with, more social support towards, and a more positive attitude towards coherent than incoherent narrators. Remarkably, these beneficial effects of coherence were observed only for narratives about positive memories. Results are explained in the light of the relevance of positive memories for the social bonding function of autobiographical memory. Furthermore, earlier work was extended and refined by investigating effects of the individual constituting dimensions of coherence (context, chronology, theme) on social responses. In line with our predictions, the dimensions of chronology and theme were most important in impacting social responses of listeners. Possibly a reduction of the attraction effect due to increased effortful processing and reduced credibility due to insufficient emotional elaboration might explain these results respectively. Furthermore, social responses were worse when narratives were incoherent with regard to more than one dimension, in line with the expected additive effect. Overall, fully incoherent narratives, which had had low scores on context, chronology, and theme, had the most adverse effect on listeners’ social responses. This study adds significantly to the domain of memory and cognition by showing how cognitive psychological research would benefit from extending a merely intrapersonal perspective to include an interpersonal perspective that considers social implications of memory and cognition as well.