Late Adolescent Identity Development: Narrative Meaning Making and Memory Telling.

Abstract

Personally important autobiographical memories are the smallest unit of the life story, which begins to emerge in adolescence. This study examined 2 features of self-defining memories in late adolescence, the meaning made of the memories to garner an understanding of the narrative construction of identity as a life story and how those memories were told with an emphasis on the functions for telling and audiences to understand the social component of narrative identity development. For late adolescents (N ϭ 185), meaning was infrequently reported for the entertainment function in comparison with the self-explanation function. At later ages, adolescents' audiences were more likely to be peers, and at earlier ages, adolescents' audiences were more likely to be parents. Discussion focuses on the individual and social levels of identity construction that are apparent in personally important autobiographical memory narratives.

Life's little (and big) lessons: Identity statuses and meaning-making in the turning point narratives of emerging adults.

“…Thus, McLean and Thorne's (2001) system was adapted to a linear system (0 -3), with increasing scores reflecting increased complexity in autobiographical reasoning. This adaptation converges with other systems for coding the increased complexity of meaning, which have often examined meaning in relation to age, finding that complexity of meaning tends to increase with age (e.g., Habermas & Paha, 2001;McCabe et al, 1991;McLean, 2005;Pratt et al, 1999), and also converges with McLean and original conceptualization of lessons as a less sophisticated form of meaning than insights.…”

Eudaimonic growth: Narrative growth goals predict increases in ego development and subjective well-being 3 years later.

“…Whereas narratives generally reflect key processes of self-development (McLean et al, 2007), growth themes in narratives reflect a personal identification with the idea of growth, such that the concept of self-development itself is revealed as the key source of personal value to the individual (Bauer, 2008;Bauer et al, 2008). Elements of intellectual-growth goals have been studied in narrative research as causal connections between events and the self (Pals, 2006a), autobiographical reasoning (Pasupathi & Mansour, 2006), lessons and insights about the self (McLean, 2005), meaning-making (McLean & Pratt, 2006), elaboration-detail (King & Smith, 2004), accommodation (King, Scollon, Ramsey, & Williams, 2000), concerns for selftransformation (Pals, 2006b), wisdom (Bluck & Gluck, 2004), and identity integration (Bauer et al, 2005b;Blagov & Singer, 2004). Elements of socioemotional-growth goals include happy endings (King et al, 2000), coherent positive resolution (Pals, 2006b), matching between possible and actual selves (King & Raspin, 2004;King & Smith, 2004), and intrinsic motivation (Bauer & McAdams, 2004b;Bauer et al, 2005b), but these constructs alone still seem to require an explicit emphasis on growth before they will predict increases in SWB prospectively.…”

An Investigation of Multiple Pathways of Developmental Intervention Change

“…The CLP targets a specific type of progressive change: positive transformational change in the content, structure, and organization of self and identity and its meaning and significance. As recognized by a range of current perspectives on identity development (e.g., McAdams, 2001;McLean, 2005McLean, , 2008, a strictly quantitative approach cannot capture changes in the meaning and significance of critical experiential components of self and identity because not only are these structural organizational changes non-linear, discontinuous, and not easily quantifiable, they are also subjective in nature.…”