Memory Narratives Research Articles

QOL-35. ANALYSIS ON THE EVOLUTIONARY PATTERN OF COGNITIVE FUNCTIONS IN CHILDREN ON FOLLOW-UP FOR BRAIN TUMORS

Abstract BACKGROUND Long-term cognitive sequelae of paediatric brain tumors are of increasing interest. The role of histology and surgery remains still unclear. Our study aimed to evaluate children cognitive functioning before and after brain tumors surgery, and at the end of additional treatments. METHODS New diagnoses of paediatric primary brain tumors were prospectively assessed. Neurocognitive evaluations were performed at diagnosis (T0), within 7-10 days from surgery (T1) and 12-18 months after the end of treatments (T2). Language, learning and memory, attention, executive functions, visuo-constructional and sensorimotor skills were evaluated at T0 and T1, Intelligent Quotient (IQ) was explored at T0 and T2. RESULTS Twenty-five patients (M:F=15:10, mean age 10.9±3.4 years) were enrolled between January 2019 and December 2022. In comparison to normal values (>7.0), at baseline patients showed major deficits in narrative memory (6.6±3.7, p<0.001) and visuo-spatial memory (copy design tasks: general 6.8±3.9, p<0.001, specific 6.2±3.3, p<0.001, motor 5.2±3.2, p<0.001). At T1 assessment, significant deficits remained in narrative memory (6.2±3.3, p<0.001) and visual-motor coordination (copy design tasks: specific 5.9±3.0, p<0.001 and motor 4.8±4.3 p<0.001); attention and visual-constructional abilities significantly improved (p=0.04 and p=0.001). On the visual construction test, children with high-grade histology scored lower than the low-grade group (Rey- Osterrieth complex figure-copy 5.1±4.4 vs 11.0±4.3; p=0.019). At T2 evaluation children showed persistent deficits in visuo-spatial processing and a possible decline in IQ scores, with lower scores compared with T0 (93 vs 100, p=0.05). CONCLUSIONS Children with brain tumors may present several neuropsychological impairments at diagnosis, particularly those with high-grade diseases. Surgery may have a positive effect on the recovery of some cognitive functions. However, cognitive decline may worsen over time. Baseline and periodic neurocognitive evaluations should be encouraged to identify functional difficulties and to develop a tailored treatment approach for the patient.

Construction of collective memory through official history education in North Cyprus (1971-2003)

Fundamental to recalling memories and remembering is to look at the past and the future concurrently. Remembering is crucial to have a temporal association so that present changes and developments can be elaborated in understanding the construction of memory. Historical trauma is a psychological and emotional collective and subjective injury which are transmitted from adults to children in a cycle process, and it continues over a life span of individuals and across generations. Soft memories are created and shared as a social process. These are narratives, historical texts and similar, less tangible forms of memory. History education has a profound influence on social discourse and the way soft memories are perceived, and since formal schooling is at the centre of shaping a generation and textbooks are the main medium of knowledge transmission, the official narrative shapes it and is often presented selectively. This research explores how the official regulation of history education is used to align official state discourse with social memory. This research employs secondary data and document analysis by examining the compulsory textbook (1979) used since 1971 in history education. It explores history education’s impact on individual narratives of remembrance and collective memory. It examines the long-term effects of what has been taught in secondary school history education on adulthood perceptions of past historical occurrences. Findings confirm that a consistent, official historical discourse supported by exposure to “hard” and “soft” memories enables the maintenance of collective memory as represented in the official discourse among society members. It also concluded that when difficult history is transmitted to the younger generation as part of education, they may experience trauma and similar negative associated feelings; furthermore, they do not necessarily unconditionally embrace the official history but question it in their adulthood.

Constructing the tellability of intergenerational memory narratives in collective remembering in StoryCorps, a digital memory-sharing platform

In the present contribution, I explore how telling intergenerational memory episodes ensures the narrative tellability and memorability of autobiographical memories in StoryCorps, a digital memory-sharing platform and archive. I first pinpoint the structural and conceptual connections between narrative and autobiographical, intergenerational, and collective memory, highlighting the possible effects of digitalization and archiving on narrative structure. Then, I analyze four autobiographical stories with intergenerational family memories from the StoryCorps database to demonstrate how the storyteller constructs tellability and memorability by strategically centering the intergenerational memory episode. I conclude that sharing individual memories on digital storytelling platforms accomplishes complex identity work for two reasons. First, it facilitates the narrative transformation of these remembered events into digitally mediated collective memory. Second, storytelling becomes a source of agency and cultural responsibility. With its focused analysis of digitalized private memories, the article contributes to understanding how digital storytelling and memory-sharing mediate mnemonic practices by recording, storing, editing, and sharing autobiographical memory narratives for undetermined audiences in an indefinite time frame.

“Gilead is within you”: A Theocratic Narrative Setting of Cultural memory in Atwood’s The Testaments

This article attempts to explore the synthetic relationship between group identities and their effects on cultural memory in Margaret Atwood’s The Testaments. It will investigate how Atwood’s dystopian fiction conspicuously weaves threads of cultural identity in the totalitarian society. While examining the work, the researchers found three forms of Memory Figures channelizing society: Architecture and time, Identical groupings, and Language. With significant attention to the prequel, The Handmaid’s Tale, this article will consider The Testaments for the dissection of hard-wired cultural memory formation. This article focuses on how a politically unsettled society of Gilead, through its Memory Figures, inscribes a cultural narrative while instructing individual memories. Atwood’s usage of these Memory Figures to achieve a theocratic regime has been scrutinized in this article. The Architecture of Gilead was given an intrusive wall of glass, where the symbol of eyes prevails, to externalize the surveillance of God on each one of its citizens, thereby forming a cultural memory of subjectivity. To make the citizens identify with groups, this theocratic regime specifies roles to citizens according to their rank for men and according to reproductive efficiency for women. Keeping in view the relevance of language in forming cultural memory, Atwood prescribed a set of greetings such as ‘under his eyes,’ and ‘praise be’ to make profound imprints on the individual memory of citizens, which has been discussed in the study. These three Memory Figures simultaneously form collective memory imprints on the citizens of Gilead, which in time became inherent cultural memories. This article explores how, by politicizing the issue of cultural memory in The Testaments, Atwood taps into the agency of people and establishes language control (communicative) to form the cultural memory narrative.

Young adults’ personal and relationship memories: recollections of self, siblings, and family

ABSTRACT We investigated the phenomenological and narrative characteristics of young adults’ self- and other-related memories within the context of significant relationships. We also examined whether participants’ gender and/or gender concordance between participants and their siblings was associated with autobiographical memory characteristics. We collected data from 108 college students who had only one sibling. All participants provided narratives in response to three memory prompts (i.e., self-related, sibling-related, and family-related) and rated their memories along dimensions such as significance, emotional valence, clarity etc. The narratives were coded on thematic content, transformativeness, mentions of others, and event type dimensions. Results revealed differences between self-related memories and sibling- and family-related memories across several dimensions. However, sibling-related and family-related memories were mostly similar to each other. No statistically significant gender or gender concordance differences were observed. Further exploratory analysis showed that memory narratives describing extended events were more transformative than single event narratives. The findings enhance our understanding about the self-in-relation to others through relationship memories.

Real Historical Imagination: the Depths of Memory under the Spatial Transformation -- Comment on the Realistic Theme Dance Drama Deep in Memory

This article focuses on the dance drama Deep in Memory, which is adapted from the real historical event of the Nanjing Massacre. The author pays attention to three layers, one is the real historical events of the Nanjing Massacre, the English works of the Nanjing Massacre, the Nanjing Massacre: the forgotten catastrophe in the Second World War, and the director of the historical events of the Nanjing Massacre and the Nanjing Massacre: the forgotten catastrophe in the Second World War. Through these three levels of transformation, real memory discusses the contradiction between history and art, which involves the realistic technique of realistic dance drama; narrative memory focuses more in the internal research of art, and discusses the space, structure and form analysis of the two dance dramas; Warm memory shows the attitude of the author s through the works, showing the humanistic care and compassion.

Specificity and valence of adolescents’ turning point memory narratives: Relationships with depressive symptoms over time

Although recent research suggests that, for community youth, greater specific (episodic) detail in self-relevant turning point memory narratives predicts depressive symptoms over time, no research has investigated whether the narratives’ specificity similarly predicts depression. Therefore, we investigated whether recalling a specific (unique, 24-hour or less) turning point narrative predicted youth depressive symptoms concurrently and across 6 months (Study 1), and, for a subset of participants, three years (Study 2). We also examined whether the valence of the implication of the experience for self (the resolution) explained additional variance and interacted with memory specificity. For Study 1 (N = 320, M = 16.9 years, 81% female), a specific (rather than a non-specific) turning point predicted greater depressive symptoms concurrently but not longitudinally, whereas a negative resolution predicted both concurrent and longitudinal depressive symptoms. The moderation result showed that a specific turning point predicted escalating depressive symptoms across six months when the resolution was negative. Study 2 (N = 68) additionally showed that a specific turning point predicted increased depressive symptoms three years later. These findings contrast with research suggesting that specific memories are related to better mental health and highlight the complexity of the role of memory in emerging youth depression.

Enhancing Chatbot Intelligence Through Narrative Memory Structures

Through the use of narrative memory structures—a cutting-edge technique intended to provide chatbots context awareness and conversational coherence—we sought to improve the intelligence of chatbots. We carefully designed our process with the goal of immediately incorporating narrative data into the chatbot's memory architecture. In order to find narrative patterns, this required evaluating and classifying previous exchanges. The narrative patterns were then saved and used to guide the chatbot's answers. The incorporation of narrative memory structures into the chatbot resulted in a significant improvement in conversational coherence and relevance, as per our study's key findings. Through the use of its narrative memory, which stores earlier encounters, the chatbot shown an impressive capacity to sustain the conversation's flow and provide more contextually relevant replies. In addition, the chatbot demonstrated improved understanding of human intentions, correctly identifying underlying motives and preferences. In addition, comments produced by integrating narrative memory structures were highly customized in addition to being accurate. By utilizing the extensive history of previous exchanges, the chatbot was able to customize replies to each user's unique situation, building a closer relationship and rapport with them. All things considered; our study highlights how narrative memory processes can revolutionize chatbot intelligence. We can improve chatbots' conversational capabilities and enable more meaningful human-computer interactions by giving them the capacity to extract narrative information from previous conversations. This opens the door to a new era of chatbot designs that put the needs of users, contextuality, and empathy first, changing the game for conversational AI in the process.

Decoding Subject-Driven Cognitive States from EEG Signals for Cognitive Brain–Computer Interface

In this study, we investigated the feasibility of using electroencephalogram (EEG) signals to differentiate between four distinct subject-driven cognitive states: resting state, narrative memory, music, and subtraction tasks. EEG data were collected from seven healthy male participants while performing these cognitive tasks, and the raw EEG signals were transformed into time–frequency maps using continuous wavelet transform. Based on these time–frequency maps, we developed a convolutional neural network model (TF-CNN-CFA) with a channel and frequency attention mechanism to automatically distinguish between these cognitive states. The experimental results demonstrated that the model achieved an average classification accuracy of 76.14% in identifying these four cognitive states, significantly outperforming traditional EEG signal processing methods and other classical image classification algorithms. Furthermore, we investigated the impact of varying lengths of EEG signals on classification performance and found that TF-CNN-CFA demonstrates consistent performance across different window lengths, indicating its strong generalization capability. This study validates the ability of EEG to differentiate higher cognitive states, which could potentially offer a novel BCI paradigm.

Spontaneous side-taking drives memory, empathy, and author attribution in conflict narratives

In two studies, we introduce the concept of spontaneous side-taking (SST) to describe how people initially align themselves in a conflict. The effects of side-taking in established conflicts are well studied, such as empathetic engagement and polarization. However, there is less known about how people spontaneously choose sides in situations without prior allegiances. To study these neglected effects of SST, we use two-character narratives to present participants with new conflicts in which they have no initial vested interest. These short narratives describe acts of aggression and detail the victimization of one character by another. Through two studies, we find: (1) victim characters receive greater attention and are remembered better; (2) victim characters receive more empathy; (3) victim characters are more likely to be viewed as the authors of conflict narratives; (4) and that side-taking flexibility diminishes after the first side-taking choice. This last finding means that there is a tendency for SST to stick over time. Overall, these findings demonstrate how victimization triggers and sustains side-taking in narratives by enhancing memory of and empathy for the victim.

FAMILY MEMORY AS A FACTOR IN THE FORMATION OF CIVIC IDENTITY OF YOUTH. SOCIOLOGICAL ANALYSIS

The article analyzes and summarizes the results of a qualitative sociological study of the family memory of young people. generation of “centennials”, using the example of students of Mordovian State University, implemented by the method of in-depth interviews in order to identify the main characteristics of the family memory of young people in the context of the formation of their civic identity. Regular interaction of the family with wider communities of memory, as well as institutional “places of memory”, in modern Russia has been established, including the exchange of information and material evidence of memory through digital and traditional archives, museums, local history publications, the media, etc., construction “assemblage points” between significant people and events in the history of the family, on the one hand, and the country, on the other, through which the historical past of the country is included in the family narrative, and the family's past in the public memorial culture. The similarities and differences between the basic structure of informants' family memory narratives and the official narrative of Russian memory policy are shown. It was revealed that the family memory of “centennials” mediates the individual's connection not with individual social groups, formed in the form of mnemonic communities, but with the community of memory of an indefinite set of people, which can be correlated with the category of “people” as a state-civil community

Making Memory: Bloody Sunday in Northern Ireland

This is a study of how collective memory forms out of traumatic experience. It addresses questions about the formation of collective identity out of individual trauma, and, in turn, how individual and collective trauma intertwine. This process of memory formation is illustrated through the example of an incident that took place in Northern Ireland on 30 January 1972, an event that came to be known as Bloody Sunday. A lawyer representing the families of the victims once succinctly described it as a ‘mass murder perpetrated before the world’s media [. . . which] took place over a period of ten to twelve minutes, within a geographical space not much bigger than two football pitches’. To explain how this ‘ten to twelve’ minutes became a powerful symbol of the excesses of state violence and a memory forever linked to Ireland’s history I apply the theory of cultural trauma. Previous research has identified several arenas of memory, ‘social spaces where different narratives of collective memory interact [. . .] distinct discourses that are tied to specific individuals, organizations, and institutions that advocate specific narratives through specific forms of media’. Four areas were identified, the political, the academic, the artistic, and the community. Along with the theory of cultural trauma, I apply that framework in analyzing the memory and memorialization of Bloody Sunday.

Parsing the Interactive Construction of Crisis Memory on Social Media: From a Memory-Agenda Perspective

ABSTRACT This study applied agenda-setting and agenda-building theories to explore the interactive memory agendas facilitated by social media. Focusing on the crisis memory of SARS constructed on Chinese social media (Weibo) during COVID-19, two competing approaches (top-down versus bottom-up) to crisis memory construction were empirically tested. A content analysis was first conducted to identify various crisis memory narratives, and then, rank-order analysis, cross-lagged correlation analysis, and multiple regression quadratic assignment procedure were performed to evaluate the reciprocal influences of crisis memory agendas of the second level (narrative salience) and the third level (narrative network) among different users. Findings show reciprocal influences among certain users’ memory-agendas in constructing crisis memory: media users showed influences on publics in terms of crisis memory agendas of both levels, while this crisis memory construction online also follows a bottom-up direction.

Skin sediments: Narrating memory in Kim de l'Horizon's Blutbuch (2022)

AbstractKim de l'Horizon's Blutbuch contributes to the contemporary posthumanist discourse of the German‐language literary landscape by developing an original way of narrating memory through transformative materialities. This article explores two forms of memory narration that de l'Horizon evokes and combines in their text resulting in a productive space of tension between the protagonist and their environment. On the one hand, the main character grasps narratives as layers of skin (Gehäute) that serve as a physical boundary of the figures in the text. On the other hand, de l'Horizon proposes a memory narrative that aims to permeate these skin boundaries to reconnect the human self with surrounding matter in a fluid, symbiotic way.

Presence of Queer Sexuality in Memories of Latvian Non-Homosexuals of the Soviet Era

The research aims to analyse oral history interviews of heterosexual people about their experience with homosexuals during the Soviet times. Eight interviews were selected for the analysis based on two criteria – the research participant belongs to the Soviet generation, and he/she has personally known homosexuals during the Soviet times. The paper presents interviews as a primary source, illuminating several challenges with obtaining the interviews and their interpretation. In addition, common narratives of communicative memories’ evidence and their influence on current views of homosexuals in Latvian society, including its historical metanarrative and historical record, which relies on the nation’s victimisation during the Soviet times, are analysed.

Конституирующие нарративы локальной исторической памяти жителей регионов Сибири: между личным и общественным

The article examines the narratives of local historical self-identification of residents of the Siberian regions of Russia. The main objective of the study was to search for specific ideas, not related to the typical historical myths of the Russian periphery, through which Siberians construct their own social identity. The information base for the study was the results of focus groups conducted in 9 cities of Siberia and the Urals: Perm, Tyumen, Omsk, Novosibirsk, Barnaul, Kemerovo, Tomsk, Krasnoyarsk, Irkutsk. It was revealed that the local historical self-identification of Siberians is based on the perceived uncritically typical heroic narrative of the Russian periphery, associated with its development by representatives of the “country,” which is understood as the central government. Among the narratives of local historical memory, narrow local subjects associated with specific territories dominate - from the construction of a bridge across the Ob in Novosibirsk to the development of the coal industry in Kuzbass. Common myths are the narratives of the heroic “development of Siberia” from Ermak to Soviet industrial construction projects. In this form, the identified set of historical myths has a clearly Moscow-centric character and cannot serve as a basis for constructing local identity. However, as soon as the peripheral national narrative comes into conflict with the personal or family experiences of respondents, it corrodes. This leads to a critical understanding of the constitutive narratives of local historical self-identification.

Postmodern Feminist Amnesia: De-centering Trauma and Re-defining Subalternity in Elizabeth Nunez’s Bruised Hibiscus

In most subaltern narratives, trauma occupies a central position. The subaltern consciousness is often limited to marginal spaces within the hegemonic agency of trauma inflictors. Gendered subalternity, ergo, imposes a further peripheral status for subaltern women. In Bruised Hibiscus (2000), Elizabeth Nunez promotes the voicing of the silent subaltern woman to step ahead of her traumatic confines. This article challenges the essentialized definitions of trauma and subalternity by subverting the totalizing enterprise of dominant centers and highlighting the ‘slippage’ between theory and practice. This movement from centers and back to centers grants the ‘new’ subaltern female characters in Bruised Hibiscus a re-locatable agency that heals neurosis through deliberate amnesiac and mnemonic practices both simultaneously and interchangeably. The women in the novel under study, Rosa and Zuela, become at once the victims and the perpetrators of trauma within a postmodern redefining and de-essentializing narrative of memory and forgetting. Keywords: Trauma, New subalternity, Amnesia, Postmodernism, Elizabeth Nunez

The function of power: A herstorical model of power, trauma, and policing African Americans.

Transmitting trauma narratives is intergenerational by nature. Few studies have taken a qualitative approach to analyzing the most pervasive trauma of the United States: the chattel slavery of Black people. Examining the lived experiences of the formerly enslaved, through their childhood and adult narrative memories of personal and second-hand interactions with White authority figures, is critical to the recognition of today's ongoing impact of policing, generational trauma, and mental health in the African American community. Using interviews archived in the Library of Congress from women (N = 19) who were identified as being members of the last living generation of formerly enslaved African Americans, researchers used a feminist-forward grounded theory methodology to understand the following: (a) What are the historical relationships between African Americans and White authority figures? (b) What are the memories associated with the interactions between African Americans and White authority figures? (c) How did these interaction processes come to be? and (d) How did these memories get passed on? The analysis of childhood memories and interactions between enslavers and African Americans close to home (i.e., on the plantation) produced six themes: (a) enmeshment with enslaver, (b) enslaver as good, (c) caretaking by enslaver, (d) enslaver control, (e) violent control by policing figures, and (f) following orders. Theoretical coding led to the formation of a full model of the function of power within the herstorical policing of African Americans close to home. The themes uncovered highlight the potentially traumatic violence and control that characterized the environment in which enslaved children lived and the systems through which White power was maintained. The herstorical analysis and results confirm the ways police violence has sought to control and harm African Americans for over 400 years and underscores the role that police violence has played in the perpetuation of intergenerational trauma and the maintenance of White power. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Suppressed, Adopted and Invented Memories

The Gospel of John reflects several layers of social memory and theological creativity concerning Jesus’s death. In the early material, there seems to be a suppressed awareness of Jesus’s fate and an unwillingness to unfold it in narrative form – something that recalls the hypothetical sayings gospel Q and the Gospel of Thomas. There is also a search for alternative, figurative ways to visualize the endpoint of Jesus’s earthly life. Eventually, the narrative memory of Jesus’s passion, as told in Mark and Matthew, was adopted with some modifications. Among the modifications of the passion storyline is the narrativization of the image of Jesus as a Paschal Lamb, an image already known to Paul. The most remarkable innovation, however, was the figure of the “Beloved Disciple” as an eyewitness to Jesus’s passion and death.

Trauma Memory Characteristics and Neurocognitive Performance in Youth Exposed to Single-Event Trauma

Cognitive models of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) highlight characteristics of trauma memories, such as disorganisation, as key mechanisms in the aetiology of the disorder. However, studies investigating trauma memory in youth have provided inconsistent findings. Research has highlighted that PTSD in youth may be accompanied by difficulties in neurocognitive functioning, potentially impacting ability to recall the trauma memory. The present study sought to investigate both trauma memory characteristics and neurocognitive functioning in youth aged 8–17 years. Youths exposed to single-event trauma, with (N = 29, Mage = 13.6, 21 female) and without (N = 40, Mage = 13.3, 21 female) a diagnosis of PTSD, completed self-report measures of trauma memory, a narrative memory task and a set of neurocognitive tests two to six months post-trauma. A group of non trauma-exposed youths (N = 36, Mage = 13.9, 27 female) were compared on narrative and neurocognitive tasks. Results indicated that trauma memories in youth with, versus without, PTSD were more sensory-laden, temporally disrupted, difficult to verbally access, and formed a more ‘central’ part of their identity. Greater differences were observed for self-reported memory characteristics compared to narrative characteristics. No between group differences in neurocognitive function were observed. Self-reported trauma memory characteristics highlight an important factor in the aetiology of PTSD. The observed lack of significant differences in neurocognitive ability potentially suggests that cognitive factors represent a more relevant treatment target than neurocognitive factors in single-event PTSD. Further research to understand the cognitive factors represented by self-reported trauma memory characteristics is recommended.