1. Rubin & Berntsen 2003: life scripts The reminiscence bump: people over 40 “remember information obtained during adolescence and early adulthood” better than other periods of life – but there is a clear difference between positive and negative memories: Berntsen & Rubin say this is keyed to life transitions and can be explained by “ a cognitive framework, a narrative/identity framework, and an account based on life scripts” Rubin & Berntsen. 2003. Life scripts help to maintain autobiographical memories of highly positive, but not highly negative, events. Memory & Cognition 31

2. Life scripts and life narratives “Life scripts are generic, whereas a life narrative deals with the individual life as actually lived, reconstructed, and narrated by an individual. Life scripts are nonpersonal and apply normatively to all members of the culture, whereas a life narrative is personal. Life scripts represent shared public knowledge, whereas a life narrative refers to private knowledge that is shared with only a few people. Life scripts deal with a fixed temporal order of events, whereas life narratives deal with a lived temporal order. Life scripts are a form of semantic knowledge, whereas life narratives represent episodic/autobiographical knowledge (p. 2).” In Berntsen & Rubin 2004, the authors claim that Cultural life scripts structure recall from autobiographical memory (Memory & Cognition 32).

3. auto/biography

4. Autobiography and life story Autobiography can be seen as a way to understand one’s life as a totality, and to explain that life to oneself and to others Life story research is often a focus for gerontology, narrative psychology, and literary and cultural theory. It is one way of examining connections between aging and autobiographical memory Life story research is concerned with the aging person’s identity and self-continuity, as well as relationships and social well-being, often organized by what the speaker constructs with autobiographical memory

5. Thinking about autobiography We assume autobiography to be “a true story”: can we have different truths? When we narrate our own lives, don’t we mis- represent historical truth without knowing it? Can we talk about everyone in our lives, and tell their secrets as well as our own? Can we have different autobiographies for each of our life-story roles?

6. “Perspective-taking”: assumptions about what the other knows, wants, and believes Can the way I tell you my story cause you to imagine me as somebody different? If I am telling you my story in order to rationalize something I did, can you tell? How? What kinds of evidence do you want if you are to believe my version of “what really happened? What will cause you to believe what I say? Or to believe I sincerely think I am being accurate? See Krauss & Fussell 1990 and subsequently; http://www.columbia.edu/~rmk7/HC/, see also Johnstone 2000 Annual Review of Anthropology: Individual Voicehttp://www.columbia.edu/~rmk7/HC/