This study explored Mandarin-speaking children’s ability in maintaining narrative coherence. Thirty Mandarin-speaking fiveyear-olds, 30 nine-year-olds and 30 adults participated. The narrative data were elicited using Frog, where are you? Narrative coherence was assessed in terms of causal networks. The results displayed children’s development in achieving narrative coherence by establishing ca...

OBJECTIVE College students are a group at risk for contracting sexually transmitted infections (STIs). While they are generally well informed about STIs, they do not consistently use condoms. An important element in preventing STIs is safer sex communication, especially with a sexual partner. This may be difficult, however, because of a lack of experience in talking about safer sex or because o...

This article describes a Narrative Engagement Framework (NEF) for guiding communication-based prevention efforts. This framework suggests that personal narratives have distinctive capabilities in prevention. The article discusses the concept of narrative, links narrative to prevention, and discusses the central role of youth in developing narrative interventions. As illustration, the authors de...

In this paper, the use of narrative agency, the control a user has over the story, within narrative games is explored. User response to two version of the same game was tested and compared; one game containing narrative agency and the other game containing a linear story. Through this experiment, it is shown that the addition of narrative agency, while it does increase the player's enjoyment of...

In this paper, I shall examine the significance of narratives in mental healthcare. I begin by discussing the narrative approach in medical anthropology and how narrative and healing relate together. I shall move on to examine narrative and psychotherapy. Finally I shall document work examining the role of narrative in teaching mental health professionals about empathy. I end by discussing the ...

This report addresses a collection of interactive storytelling systems to provide an overview of state-of-the-art methods of narrative management and of enabling social interaction between users and virtual agents. This is done to inform the construction of a social cues and training demonstrator (a serious game) that enables its users to improve their social behaviour. In this report, a distin...

Verband action-based event representations have been the cornerstone of narrative representation. However, these suffer from a lack of specificity as to the level of abstraction being discussed. For example, a single verb-based event can be elaborated ad infinitum, generating arbitrarily many new verb-based events. In this position paper, we present a proposal for the fundamental unit of narrat...

In the wake of recent wars, some military personnel face considerable physical and mental health problems. In this article I explore the effects of an adapted sport and inclusive adventurous training course for military personnel who have experienced physical injury and/or psychological trauma. Using a dialogical narrative approach, I analyzed stories shared by six soldiers during the course to...