lationships in cognition and remembering. One such view, which emphasizes the role of social interaction in remembering, is the cognitive – narrative perspective. The cognitive – narrative perspective suggests an interaction between information processing and a personal narrative process. In other words, event characteristics that are especially important and distinguishable which occur in an individual’s life and conversed about with others, would be better stored and recalled than events that are less salient. These life narratives or life stories form the basis of the individual´s remembered self (Greenberg & Rubin, 2003). According to the cognitive – narrative perspective, three distinct but overlapping processes are involved in the formulation of autobiographical memories, by which autobiographical memories are combined into a coherent life story and related to the current self. These three processes are the 1. construction, 2. co-construction and 3. re-construction of autobiographical memories. These three processes are distinct but overlapping. 1. A personal narrative format plays a significant role in the construction process of autobiographical memories. This narrative process aids in the retention of a whole episode, and not just fragments of scenes. In other words, narratives are not a biography of the facts and events of a person’s life story, but rather the way a person integrates those facts and events internally picks them apart and weaves them back together to make meaning. This narrative becomes a form of identity, in which the things someone chooses to include in the story, and the way he tells it, can both reflect and shape who he is. A life story doesn’t just say what happened, it says why it was important, what it means for who the person is, and for what happens next. Thus, a personal narrative format supports the organization of memory as a coherent whole by giving the person a framework that helps him/her to learn how to remember. Narrative is compelling because it provides an account not only of what happens to people, the “landscape of action” but what those involved in the action know, think, or feel-the “landscape of consciousness” (Bruner, 1986). Personal narratives, the stories we have about our lives, are created by linking certain events together in particular sequences across a time period and finding a way of making sense of them (White, 1997). A personal narrative format establishes a major form of organization in autobiographical memory by providing the following structures (a) events that recur throughout the story/ script (thematic coherence); (b) placing events into the correct time order (temporal); (c) linking events in a sequence (causal) (Habermas & Bluck, 2000). 2. Memory dialogues or memory conversations about the past play an important role in the co-construction process of autobiographical memory and often require some degree of negotiation. Research suggests that memory
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