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Updated: May 26, 2026

Assessing the Coherence of Parents' Short Narratives Regarding their Child Using the Five-Minute Speech Sample Procedure
Published on: September 19, 2019
Narrative quality and disturbance pre- and post-emotion-focused therapy for child abuse trauma
Elisabeth S Mundorf1, Sandra C Paivio
1Department of Psychology, University of Windsor, Ontario.
Abstract:
This study predicted that the quality of trauma narratives written before and following emotion-focused therapy for child abuse trauma would be positively associated with psychological disturbance before and following therapy. Narratives for 37 clients were coded for emotion words, temporal orientation, incoherence, and depth of experiencing. At pretreatment, negative emotion words and experiencing were correlated with abuse resolution, r(35) = -.36, and r(35) = -.34, respectively. At posttreatment, narrative incoherence was correlated with trauma symptoms, r(35) = .33, whereas present-future orientation and experiencing were correlated with abuse resolution, r(35) = -.37, and r(35) = -.31, respectively. Pretreatment incoherence was associated with posttreatment trauma symptoms, r(35) = .42, and pretreatment depth of experiencing was associated with posttreatment abuse resolution, r(35) = -.37. Results support narrative quality as an index of trauma disturbance.
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