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how to talk about memory with others, and thereby learn how to formulate
their own memories as narratives (Nelson 1993).
Humans are constantly telling and re-telling stories about themselves and
others. Humans are autobiographic agents, agents which are embodied and
situated in a particular environment (including other agents), and which dy-
namically reconstruct their individual 'history' (autobiography) during their
lifetimes (Dautenhahn 1996). The biologist Steven Rose uses the term lifelines
in order to refer to a living organism's trajectory through time and space which
make each organism an
individual
: “...it is in the nature of living systems to
be radically indeterminate, to continually construct their - our - own futures,
albeit in circumstances not of our own choosing” (Rose 1997: 7).
Telling (part of ) a plausible autobiographical story to others is more than
relating a plausible sequence of episodic events; it includes the construction of a
plausible story based on one's goals, intentions and motivations. If we listen to
a story originating from a completely different cultural background, the main
problem of understanding is usually not to figure out what the actors
do
,but
why
they are doing it, i.e. understanding their goals and intentions. Once we
understand the underlying motivations for their behavior, it helps us to make
the link to similar situations which we, the listeners, experienced ourselves. We
then might recall events which are from their appearance completely different,
but with a similar meaning for us, which allows an understanding on a level
of similarity which addresses the experiential, rather than cognitive, aspects of
story understanding.
This creative aspect of story-telling, i.e. to tell autobiographic stories about
oneself and create biographic re-constructions about other persons, is linked
to the empathic, experiential way of relating other persons to oneself. Story-
telling is a central mechanism in human social understanding.
Relationship between social and narrative intelligence: The case of autism
I argued above that in human evolution narrative capacities evolved from the
need to effectively manage social dynamics, socially bond with others, exchang-
ing information on third-party relationships etc. In this section I discuss that
an impairment of narrative skills might contribute to difficulties people with
autism have with social relationships.
People with autism have generally great difficulty in social interactions and
developing relationships with other people. They are impaired in reading so-
cial cues and facial expressions, which makes the human social world around
