Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Psychology
In psychology, narrative is thought of as a way in which humans make sense
of the world. This notion is particularly advanced in Jerome Bruner's work on
narrative psychology (Bruner 1990, 1991). Bruner argues that narrative is fun-
damental to human understanding of intentional behavior, i.e. that humans
make sense of intentional action by assimilating it into narrative structures.
This argument is used as a basis for making systems from interfaces to intelli-
gent agents more understandable, by communicating in ways that are easy to
assimilate to narrative (Don 1990, Sengers 1999).
In “The narrative construction of reality,” Jerome Bruner describes the fun-
damental properties of human narrative, used as a basis by NI researchers for
understanding how to make narrative a part of computational systems.
In “Stories and social networks,” Sack explores narrative as a “technology of
the self,” providing tools that support analysis of identity construction through
the telling and re-telling of stories within a social group.
In “Agneta & Frida: Merging web and narrative?,” Persson, Höök, and
Sjölinder address the human drive to create coherence out of disparate data.
In “Web guide agents: Narrative context with character,” Isbister and Doyle
analyse the use of narrative by human tour guides to make unfamiliar environ-
ments understandable and interesting.
In “Stories of lemurs and robots: The social origin of storytelling,” Daut-
enhahn describes the phylogenetic origins of human narrative intelligence in
primate social intelligence. She underlines the importance of telling stories to
construct an autobiography, the groundwork for a sense of self. She describes
problems in social and narrative intelligence in autistic people, and proposes
the use of robots in therapy to develop social and narrative intelligence.
In “We are what we tell: Designing narrative environments for children,”
Bers motivates and describes the use of narrative in identity construction kits,
virtual environments which help children to develop a coherent sense of self
and their values.
In “Schizophrenia and narrative in artificial agents,” Sengers uses the prin-
ciples of narrative psychology as derived from Bruner in order to construct
artificial agents which are narratively understandable to human users.
Cultural studies
In cultural studies, narrative is studied as a way in which a culture structures
and propagates knowledge. Because humans quickly internalize narrative, it is
