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Exploring the Absence of High Points in Story Reminiscence With Carers of People With Profound Disabilities
Author(s) -
Grove Nicola
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
journal of policy and practice in intellectual disabilities
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.592
H-Index - 30
eISSN - 1741-1130
pISSN - 1741-1122
DOI - 10.1111/j.1741-1130.2006.00088.x
Subject(s) - narrative , storytelling , psychology , construct (python library) , set (abstract data type) , reminiscence , developmental psychology , social psychology , cognitive psychology , philosophy , linguistics , computer science , programming language
Narrative, central to the interactions that take place within families, is a way that experiences are recalled and shared, family relationships are actualized, and individual and group identities are exemplified and constructed. People with profound and multiple disabilities, who function at a preverbal level of development, are highly dependent on others to provide narrative reconstructions of key events in their lives. To examine how carers relate such experiences of their offspring with profound intellectual disabilities, data were collected and analyzed from a set of interviews with parents, carers, and friends of members of a storytelling group. Structural analysis of their narratives showed that accounts of events were often not fully elaborated and lacked high points. This indicates that such carers may find it difficult to construct stories about specific events in the lives of their offspring. It is suggested that this difficulty results from an interaction between the characteristics of the individuals who lack the ability to make reference to past events and carer‐based quality of life issues. Possible reasons are related to the difficulty of sharing memories through language and the pain associated with many key lifetime caring experiences. These preliminary findings have implications for service providers who are tasked with developing effective systems of communication and supports for such carers.