Story Characters Research Articles

Evolutionary development of mother-child scaffolding for moral comprehension.

This evolutionary developmental study employed an experimental recursive narrative ecological niche, comparing scaffolded mother-child (5-year-old) pairs to unassisted controls as they independently viewed and discussed a realistic fictional family video depicting a father-daughter emotional conflict over the girl's risky behavior, which violated harm/care and fairness/justice moral foundation norms. A microgenetic analysis was conducted on a selected variant pair that demonstrated high adaptive fitness in the niche by employing developmentally advanced cooperative scaffolding tools. The conversational ecosystem phase was characterized by repeated maternal theory-oriented "why" questions and coordinated child causal responses, forming a joint epistemic investigation that facilitated the child's moral understanding of the characters' responsibilities and motives. The pair used quasi-justice procedures to gather evidence, judge, and construct moral attributes for the characters. Their conversational mechanism was supported by mutual mindreading, mental time travel, and empathic communications, as they interacted simultaneously with each other and the story characters. A narrative ecological scaffolding theory emerged, establishing a standard for cooperative epistemic scaffolding between the mother and the child. Future training programs should utilize the Zone of Proximal Development method to instruct similar parent-child pairs.

Women’s Empowerment in Local and Global Fiction: From Toba Beyond

This study explores women's empowerment in literature, focusing on the interplay between tradition and modernity across different cultural contexts. Employing comparative literary analysis, this research examines Lucy by Jamaica Kincaid and Mangalua by Idris Pasaribu. The methodology involves thematic and narrative analysis, where thematic analysis identifies key motifs related to empowerment, resistance, and gender roles, while narrative analysis examines how each character's story arc reflects broader societal norms. Through these analyses, the study highlights how each protagonist navigates societal expectations and challenges gender norms within traditional and modern frameworks. Findings indicate that both novels use women’s empowerment as a lens to critique and reshape cultural expectations, offering insights into gender roles across varied societies. The study concludes with recommendations for further research on cross-cultural gender narratives, acknowledges the limitations of focusing on only two novels, and suggests broader literary comparisons for future studies.

Research on animation design of woodblock print characters based on audience aesthetic differences

Traditional woodblock prints are a kind of Chinese folk traditional painting art, with a long history and unique artistic style. It has a long history and unique artistic style. The richness of its themes and wide range of applications cover many aspects such as New Year festivals, wedding banquets and birthday celebrations, religious rituals and lanterns and toys. The wide range of themes and wide range of applications of woodblock prints creates a rich and colourful connotation, especially traditional stories and character images, which constitute an important part of the woodblock prints, there are very rich story resources and character resources in the woodblock prints for animation creators to refer to, different creators of woodblock prints have different understandings and re-designs, and the audience has mixed feelings about the effect of character design. With the development of modern animation production technology and the increasing attention to traditional culture, more and more practitioners have begun to explore the animation of story characters in the non-heritage culture, and this paper aims to explore the feasible path of animation of the elements in woodblock prints under the aesthetic differences.

The Distance Between the Story Character and the Reader: Evidencing the Impact of Familiarity in Children’s Storybooks

Familiarity is a crucial element in narrative fiction reading for children, playing a significant role in social learning from storybooks. Nevertheless, distinct studies greatly vary in their interpretation of what renders a storybook familiar to a child, researchers’ methods for measuring familiarity, and how researchers link familiarity to reading outcomes. This integrative review synthesized the principal ways in which researchers define and measure familiarity when investigating the impacts of storybooks on children’s social learning outcomes. In particular, we derived four key definition categories of familiarity from the current empirical literature: personal relevance, anthropomorphism, social relevance and realism. We specified which outcomes are most impacted by which type of familiarity, in terms of broader outcomes (e.g. transfer of factual information from storybooks examined for anthropomorphism and realism) or specific learning effects (e.g. story comprehension with storybooks modified for personal relevance). Overall, our findings suggest that it is not familiarity per se, but rather its extent (how much the content of a storybook is familiar to the child prior to reading), that holds importance for social learning outcomes. The theoretical assumption of the distance hypothesis provides a compelling explanation for this finding.

Emotional understanding: a training study with Pakistani preschoolers

ABSTRACT This study was conducted to investigate whether a translated and adapted conversational training programme enhances emotion understanding in preschool children. Given the lack of such research in Pakistan (and outside the West in general), the training study reported here was conceived to fill this gap. Thirty-nine 5- to 6-year-olds at two school sites were randomly assigned to training and control groups, after screening for emotional and behavioural problems. The participants were pre- and post-tested on Emotional Comprehension after an 8-week intervention. Children from both groups listened to the translated and adapted version of the ‘Stories of Jack and Theo’, rich in mental state language. Children from the training group participated in conversations about the mental states of the story characters and themselves using semi-structured conversational procedures, while children from the control group were engaged in board games mediated by an adult. The findings showed that children in the training group outperformed those in the control group on emotional comprehension even after statistically controlling for earlier executive function and working memory.

Promoting theory of mind and emotion understanding in preschool settings: an exploratory training study.

This new exploratory study is part of a larger ongoing follow-up project. Its specific aim was to verify whether an innovative European Program, primarily designed to enhance children's social and emotional learning, led to gains in theory of mind and emotion understanding when implemented in preschool settings. Thirty-four children (mean age: 56.4 months; SD: 10.1; range: 40-70 months) participated in the study. They were randomly and equally divided into a training group and a control group. The training sample completed eight linguistic-conversational activities drawn from the Program, in groups of 5 to 6 children, over 8 weeks. The activities were based on listening to stories and/or watching videos and then thinking and talking about the inner world (thoughts and emotions) of the story characters as well as the participants' own inner states. During the training phase, the children in the control group engaged in drawing or free play activities. At both the pre-test and post-test phases of the study, all the children completed a language test, a battery of theory of mind (ToM) tasks (including 'change of location' and 'unexpected content' tasks), and the Test of Emotion Comprehension which evaluates nine components of emotion understanding (EU). The validated national versions of the tests were administered in all cases. Significant differences were identified between the training and control groups. Indeed, the participants in the Program training activities, which were based on conversational exchanges between an adult and a group of children, as well as among the children themselves, outperformed the control participants on both overall theory of mind and overall emotion understanding. A more detailed analysis showed that the training group outperformed the control group in relation to both specific components of EU and the 'change of location' ToM task. The results of this exploratory study suggest that the Program is effective at enhancing preschoolers' social understanding and thus merits implementation in preschool settings.

MOCK IMPOLITENESS AND SYMBOLIC INTERACTIONISM IN KI SENO NUGROHO’S JAVANESE SHADOW PUPPET SHOW

This research aims to investigate the use of mock impoliteness in Ki Seno Nugroho’s shadow puppet performances and the formation of symbolic interactionism between the puppeteer and the audience. This is due to the evolving forms of politeness within Javanese society, particularly in the realm of shadow puppet performances in the modern era. Additionally, there is a public perception of Ki Seno Nugroho as a humorous puppeteer using Bagong as a means of communication during his performances. The analysis of conversations between Bagong and other characters is used to explore the context of mock impoliteness and symbolic interactionism in Ki Seno Nugroho’s shadow puppet shows titled “Bagong Duta,” “Bagong Maneges,” and “Semar Mbangun Kayangan.” The results of this study indicate that the use of mock impoliteness serves to create a humorous atmosphere, thus enhancing the entertainment aspect of Ki Seno Nugroho’s shadow puppet performances. Moreover, it seems that Ki Seno Nugroho successfully portrays Bagong in three forms of symbolic interactionism: as a physical entity (the youngest son of Semar, the father of all panakawan characters in the Javanese puppet shadow story), a social entity (a representation of resistance by the common people towards authority), and an abstract entity (an entertainment element in shadow puppet performances).

SAGA: results of a second trial testing a mentalizing-based reading intervention on children and staff in early childhood education

Social–emotional development is a key factor in child well-being and development, and studying how it can be supported in early childhood is crucial. This study acted as a second trial testing the efficacy of a shared story book reading intervention combined with mentalizing discussions (SAGA), on children’s (N = 196) social–emotional development. In contrast to the first trial, the current trial utilized a group comprised of mostly multilingual children, attending daycare in a minority language. In addition, we investigated the effect of the intervention on the mentalizing capacity of the staff. The staff of the early childhood education and care (ECEC) centers were trained to lead discussions about story characters’ mental states with children three times a week. The staff’s mentalization ability was measured by the self-reported Mentalization Scale (MentS). Children’s social–emotional development was evaluated via the teacher-reported Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire SDQ, and verbal fluency via a subtest from the NEPSY II neuropsychological test battery. After 12 weeks, the children in the SAGA group showed improvement in prosocial behavior, whereas no change was observed in the control group. Furthermore, within the SAGA group, the children showing initially lower scores for prosocial behavior displayed larger improvement compared to their peers with higher scores at baseline. No such intervention-based improvement emerged in verbal fluency. Unlike in the first trial, the intervention did not have an impact on children’s internalizing or externalizing problems. The results suggest that story reading sessions combined with mentalizing discussions about emotions, thoughts, and intentions of the story characters may support children’s social–emotional development within the realm of prosocial behavior, although the possibility to decrease children’s internalizing and externalizing problems with these sessions remains unclear based on the two trials. In addition, training the ECEC staff in mentalization theory and guiding them toward mind-related dialogs improved staff motivation to mentalize, as well as their child-related mentalization capacity.

Menganalisis Nilai-nilai Moral dari Karakter Desiree dalam Cerita Pendek (Désirée's Baby) oleh Kate Chopin

Etymologically, the word moral comes from the Latin mos, which means the customs that a person has towards the people around him. Meanwhile, the general meaning is the norms of life that are carried out in order to maintain the level of social order in life. Moral values ​​in general are points related to good and bad behavior that guide a person's life. Therefore, this research was created to describe the moral values ​​of "Desiree" the main character in the short story "Désirée's Baby" in 1893. Analysis of this journal emphasizes the moral message that the author wants to convey to readers through analysis of the story's characters. In this story the main character Desiree presents a series of complex and deep moral values. The aim of this research is to find out and understand what moral values ​​are contained in the short story so that readers can emulate and learn from them for life.

The autobiographical critic within: Perceiving oneself as a major character in one’s life story predicts well-being

Narrative identity research typically assumes that people always play the role of the main character in the life stories they provide (McAdams, 2018). However, it is possible that some people view themselves as playing the role of a “side” character or minor character in their life story. Such views of the self are likely to influence well-being outcomes. In three studies we use a novel self-report method to show that seeing oneself as a major versus minor character within one’s own life story significantly impacts well-being both prospectively and retrospectively. Additionally, we demonstrate that this major character construct is associated with rated psychological need satisfaction, autonomous goal pursuit, and coded agency. We believe these findings contribute to expanding available autobiographical assessments and predictions of well-being from narrative data.

The influence of story character realism and theme on protagonists’ internal states and dialogue in children’s retells

Anthropomorphised animals are a prevalent character type in children’s books. However, stories with fantastical protagonists are associated with poorer social learning than those with human protagonists. We explored whether children’s representations of characters’ internal states and dialogue in story retells were related to story character realism (anthropomorphised animal, human), story theme (sharing, busyness), age, and vocabulary. Three- to seven-year-olds (N = 171) listened to one of four versions of an illustrated storybook that manipulated character realism and theme. Developmental trends were evident: Older children included more internal state references and dialogue in their retells than younger children. Of note, children retelling a prosocial story with human protagonists included more socio-relational language than those retelling a busy-themed story featuring humans; the same advantage was not evident for stories with animal protagonists. These findings imply that realistic protagonists may elicit more robust representations of social ideas in the minds of young children.

Gender- and Age-related Constraints in Japanese Politeness Marking: A Statistical Analysis of the Tokyo Story Characters’ Usage of Keigo

Gender- and Age-related Constraints in Japanese Politeness Marking: A Statistical Analysis of the Tokyo Story Characters’ Usage of Keigo

Measuring identification with narrative characters: the development and validation of a new scale

During narrative reception, one psychological response audiences may experience toward story characters is identification, which involves a sense of merging between self and character. Given the lack of formally validated measures of this construct in the literature, the current paper introduces a new 12-item scale for measuring identification. Scale development and validation took place over three sequential studies. Exploratory factor analysis in Study 1 (N = 224) indicated four related factors: merging, perspective-taking, understanding, and emotional involvement. In Study 2 (N = 191), confirmatory factor analysis suggested that a second-order four-factor model provided a good fit to the data and a more parsimonious explanation of the scale’s factor structure compared to a first-order model. In addition, the overall scale and subscales demonstrated adequate internal consistency and correlated in the expected directions with theoretically relevant and irrelevant constructs. Using a more demographically diverse sample, Study 3 (N = 290) established measurement invariance of the scale across two narratives in terms of configural, metric, and partial scalar invariance, and provided further support for its factor structure, reliability, and validity.

Paradoks Perubahan Sosial Bali dalam Cerpen Indonesia dan Bali Modern

This article discusses the representation of Balinese social change in modern Indonesian and Balinese short stories. The objects of study are the Indonesian short story, "Paradoks" by Putu Wijaya and the Balinese short story, "Jaen Idup di Bali" by Made Suar-Timuhun. The main problem in this study is how social change in Bali and the response of the Balinese people represented in these two short stories. By using semiotics theory, especially Algirdas J. Greimas' isotopic analysis model, this study finds that the two short stories represent a paradox in Balinese social change. The Balinese characters in the short story are described as viewing Balinese social change with anxiety, whereas people from outside Bali see Balinese social change as a gift that must be grateful for. This paradoxical picture reflects the social reality in Balinese society today in facing social changes in its homeland.

Unfulfilled intentions: family stories and narratives on unrealised emigration under emigration restrictions

ABSTRACT The paper sheds light on the character of family stories concerning unrealised emigration experienced under emigration restrictions and their potential intergenerational impacts. To this end, it explores the family stories on unfulfilled intentions to emigrate from two countries that were part of the Socialist Bloc, drawing on data from semi-structured in-depth interviews with people whose family members intended to emigrate from the Polish People’s Republic and the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic but who have not fulfilled their plans. The study highlights how memories on the experience of unrealised emigration have been transmitted across generations within families, how the character of family stories varies, and what mechanisms may underlie the potential influence of the experience over migration-related attitudes, norms, aspirations, and in some cases intentions and behaviour, of the non-migrants’ descendants.

Narrative transportation: A systematic literature review and future research agenda

AbstractConsumers are inundated with opportunities to become engaged with marketing‐generated stories, from watching an influencer detail her adventures abroad or a commercial about a military service member who makes it home just in time for the holidays. When consumers become so engaged with a story that they begin to connect with the story characters and imagine what will happen next, they experience a process known as narrative transportation, which has significant positive outcomes for marketers. Given the value that narrative transportation provides to marketers, we conduct a systematic literature review to both synthesize and provide direction on the literature of narrative transportation. From our analysis of 95 peer‐reviewed articles, we identify relevant theoretical foundations and concepts (antecedents, outcomes, and moderators) employed in these articles. Using these results as our foundation, we detail how narrative transportation has evolved in terms of both the presentation of the story and the antecedents that affect narrative transportation. Further, we present a conceptual model that will represent the next iteration of the narrative transportation framework and suggest avenues for future research. In doing so, we enable researchers to continue the exploration of the narrative transportation construct.

Pop-Up Book Learning Media Used with the Problem Based Learning Model to Determine Characters in Fictional Stories

The low student learning outcomes in Indonesian are caused by a lack of media or a mismatch in the learning models used by teachers in learning. This research aims to develop Pop-Up Book learning media with a Problem-Based Learning (PBL) learning model to improve Indonesian language learning outcomes for fourth-grade elementary school students. This type of research is developed using the Borg & Gall development model. The research subjects were 25 students. The experts who are the subject of this research are media experts and material experts. The methods used to collect data are observation, interviews, questionnaires, documentation, and tests. This research instrument is in the form of a questionnaire and test questions. Data analysis techniques use data normality tests (Kolmogorov Smirnov), paired t-tests, and N-gain tests. The research results showed that after going through the product validation stage by material experts, a score of 90.9% was obtained. According to media experts obtained a score of 85.4% in the very feasible category. The effectiveness of the media was tested by calculating the results of the initial and final tests using the paired t-test. It was found that there were differences in the average learning outcomes before and after applying the Pop-Up Book learning media with the PBL model. It was concluded that the Pop-Up Book was effective and suitable for learning and improved students' ability to understand the material of finding fictional story characters in Indonesian subjects. The implication of this research is that the Pop-Up Book developed can be used in Indonesian language learning.

Drama during story time supports preschoolers’ understanding of story character feeling states

Inference generation, an emerging skill in preschool-aged children, is critical for story comprehension and often requires instruction and practice to develop. Drama-based instruction (DBI) is a promising strategy for supporting preschool students’ inferencing skills, emotion understanding, and overall story comprehension. The current study examined the effects of a DBI story time intervention on preschool students’ recall of story character feeling states. As part of the larger intervention, 196 students (ages 3-5) were randomly assigned by classroom to participate in DBI or traditional story time. After story time, students completed a brief story retelling task (free and prompted recall of the story). Recordings of students’ story retellings were coded for embodied behavior (i.e., gesture, facial expression, vocal change, and body movement) specific to character feelings. Embodied behaviors supported student recall of story character feelings and emotion words. DBI intervention students used more embodiment, specifically gesture, when recalling story character feelings compared to their control group peers. Finally, hearing a DBI story supported students’ emotion word recall, particularly for 3- and 4-year-old students. The findings from this study offer evidence for incorporating drama-based teaching strategies into story time to promote students’ inferencing skills regarding story character internal states and subsequent story comprehension.

Linguistic Personality of the Marvel Cinematic Universe Character Nebula: Narrative and LIWC Analyses

Blockbuster films intended for an international audience often depict universally recognisable psychological motivations and limitations, presenting characters whose verbal expressions create distinct psychological impressions. This paper focused on the relationship between language use, including narratives and psychological categories of words, and the psychological traits of cinematic personalities. The study aimed to investigate how a character's language usage exposed their personality, psychological attributes, and transformations throughout their story arc and archetype. To achieve this, in the research a connection between Maslow's hierarchy of human needs, Jung's concept of archetypes, and Schmidt's typology of master characters in fiction was drawn, which expanded the understanding of the heroine Nebula from Guardians of the Galaxy verbal behavior. The research further defined the character's psychological image and arc by analysing their speech patterns. It identified the character's archetypes, namely the Backstabber and the Father's Daughter, and explored the progression between these archetypes. Additionally, the article employed the narrative analysis to construct the character's story. The narrative analysis was concluded with the implementation of the LIWC-22 psycholinguistic analysis in order to validate the findings derived from the psycholinguistics and cinematic studies. This method allowed for a comprehensive examination of the language used by cinematic characters, providing insights into their psychological traits and development. Ultimately, this research has contributed to the comprehension of how people's psychological characteristics are depicted and communicated through language in mass cinematography.

An Examination of Identity and Colonialism in Tayeb Saleh's Season of Migration to the North through the Lens of Frantz Fanon's Black Skin, White Masks A Comparative Study

"In the exploration of post-colonial literature, Tayeb Saleh's 'Season of Migration to the North' and Frantz Fanon's 'Black Skin, White Masks' emerge as pivotal works that intricately dissect the complex interplay between identity and colonialism. Both authors delve into the psychological ramifications of colonial histories on individual identities, unraveling the multifaceted layers of the post-colonial experience. The themes of identity and colonialism in Tayeb Salih's "Season of Migration to the North" through the lens of Frantz Fanon's seminal work, "Black Skin, White Masks." By examining the experiences of the protagonist, Mustafa Sa'eed, who returns to Sudan after studying in England, the essay delves into the complex ways in which colonial encounters shape individual identity. Drawing on Fanon's theories, particularly the concepts of double consciousness and the psychological effects of colonization, the analysis sheds light on the psychological and cultural impact of the colonial experience on Sa'eed and other characters in the novel. This article investigates the idea of cultural hybridity and the ambivalence that arises from navigating multiple cultural influences. Moreover, it explores the gender dynamics present in both works, emphasizing the power imbalances and objectification of women within the colonial context. Through a comparative analysis, the article seeks to highlight the characters' struggles for authentic selfhood and the broader implications of their experiences in a post-colonial world. Ultimately, this exploration provides insights into the enduring relevance of these themes and the intricate interplay between identity and colonialism in literature. The present article seeks to examine the nuanced ways in which Saleh's narrative and Fanon's psychoanalytic insights intersect, offering a profound understanding of the profound impact of colonialism on the construction and negotiation of identity in a post-colonial world."
 Tayeb Salih's novel, Season of Migration to the North, delves into the intricate relationships that exist between colonialism and identity in post-colonial Sudan. In close resemblance to Frantz Fanon's groundbreaking work Black Skin, White Masks, the article explores the novel's complex concerns of identity building, cultural hybridity, and the psychological effects of colonialism in African literature. By their audacious writings, Fanon and Salih both transformed the postcolonial African landscape. Using a postcolonial perspective, this study investigates how the story's characters navigate their cultural heritage and sense of self in the years after colonial domination.