That's the way it was: Age differences in the structure and quality of adults' personal narratives

Abstract

It has been suggested that late adulthood represents a period particularly specialized for the transmission of information to younger generations (Mergler, Faust, & Goldstein, 1985). The present research was designed to explore this idea cross‐sectionally by studying the structure and quality of personal narratives produced by adults of varying ages. Personal narratives were obtained from 20 participants in each of three age ranges: 18–25, 26–55, and 60–87. The WAIS‐R vocabulary and a sentence span task were also administered. These narratives were then rated for quality by an age‐diverse sample of 26 adults. The narratives were also categorized by the episodic structure system of Stein and Glenn (1978) and the high‐point system of Labov and Waletzsky (1967). Results showed that the narratives of the oldest group were judged by the raters to be of better quality than those of the youngest adults. Raters also preferred narratives from those with higher WAIS‐R vocabulary scores. Consistent relationships between story quality ratings and the structural categorization systems of high‐point and episodic analysis were found, with structurally “better” narratives rated higher overall. Results of analyses of the relationship between age and story structure revealed that the older adults produced more narratives with a clear high‐point structure than other age groups, whereas there were no age differences in use of the various types of episodic structures described by Stein and Glenn.