Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
how children use narrative in the context of these identity construction envi-
ronments in order to explore their values. She argues that narrative functions
to develop a cohesive sense of self out of diverse and potentially conflicting
“subselves.”
Jerome Bruner is the founder of Narrative Psychology, an area of research
that focuses on how human beings use narrative to understand the world
and one another. Narrative psychology insists on the importance of stories
in human understanding, contrasting with statistical, logical, and abstract ap-
proaches popular in the psychological subfields most often imported into AI.
As such, narrative psychology is an important resource for NI researchers
who find previously used psychological importations inappropriate for their
work. Bruner's classic piece, “The narrative construction of reality,” reprinted
from
Critical Inquiry
, describes the properties of narrative and how they are
used to create understandings of the world, giving researchers an intellectual
framework for bringing narrative into their systems.
Kerstin Dautenhahn is a researcher in robotics and agents who focuses on
socially intelligent agents and its evolutionary origins in animals, especially pri-
mates. Dautenhahn argues that the currently fashionable study of sociality in
terms of ant and other 'anonymous' societies is inadequate for understand-
ing what it means to be a social being for humans, primates, and other animals
who live in individualized societies with complex forms of social interaction. In
“Stories of lemurs and robots: The social origin of story-telling,” Dautenhahn
relates social intelligence with narrative intelligence, arguing that storytelling
has evolved in response to the social structure and social dynamics of primate
communities. This means narrative forms an important part of the social glue
at least for human societies and perhaps in a prototypical form in primate soci-
eties. She describes experiments in agents with a simple ability to use narrative
to understand their own and others' behaviors, and work on using social robots
to help autistic children to understand increasingly complex social behavior.
Brenda Laurel is one of the pioneers of Narrative Intelligence, having ex-
plored the possibility for interactive fiction in her doctoral thesis (Laurel 1986),
and subsequently opened up the area of narrative interfaces with Abbe Don and
Tim Oren, as described above. More recently, Laurel started a company, Purple
Moon, which built software for girls. In “Vital narratives,” Laurel discusses the
kinds of narrative available in American culture today, arguing for the impor-
tance of kinds of narratives that allow for flexible, critical use. She analyses the
kinds of relationships which narrative supports, and argues that the best kinds
of narratives are inclusive and accessible, stories that can be adapted and made
relevant to their listeners' lives.
