For centuries, storytellers and scops recited epics and national, tribal, historical, and religious stories for people, through musical speeches. Some of these narrators wrote down what they recited, and some others dictated them for scribes to be recorded. Some kings and lords also had scops in their courts to recite the stories to scribes. One of the old, oral stories of Persian literature th...

In two studies, 5- and 6-year-old children were questioned about the status of the protagonist embedded in three different types of stories. In realistic stories that only included ordinary events, all children, irrespective of family background and schooling, claimed that the protagonist was a real person. In religious stories that included ordinarily impossible events brought about by divine ...

The logical memory test of the Wechsler Memory Scale is one of the most frequently used standardized tests for assessing verbal memory and consists of two separate short stories each containing 25 idea units. Problems with practice effects arise with re-testing a patient, as these stories may be remembered from previous assessments. Therefore, alternative versions of the test stimuli should be ...

As obesity prevention initiatives increasingly shift toward approaches focused on policy, systems, and environmental change, opportunities to share experiences from the field and lessons learned are growing. Stories are a tool to illustrate processes and outcomes of initiatives that can complement quantitative results. The use of stories, however, is not widely recognized, and the methods and t...

The art of storytelling, similar to poetry, takes us to a different realm, yet always bringing us back to where we are. In many traditional societies, ethical concerns were taught through stories. A few stories from the Buddhist tradition have been selected to convey some basic teachings of the Buddha on ethical issues. This does not mean that these few stories capture the whole of Buddhist eth...