Keywords

1 Introduction

In June 2019, the United Nations pointed out three major trends: the number of new births has decreased, the number of elderly people has grown rapidly, and more countries are facing population decline. The well-being of the aging population is a current and growing concern. In Taiwan, the proportion of the elderly population over the age of 65 has reached 14.05%, meaning one in seven people is an elderly person, which represents a significant number, and Taiwan has entered an “aged society”. An elderly society, which is already an important global development issue, has huge impacts on the elderly themselves, their families, and on society and country.

It is a physiological phenomenon of aging and a self-rescue method to repair the unresponsive brain of the elderly to help them remember their past and talk about the past. The memory ability in old age is related to the health status of each individual, and has influence on social ability. It is pointed out that recall in old age is more frequent, and this spontaneous process can help the elderly think more clearly and regain confidence. The retrospective “storytelling” process involves complex cognitive processes, including imagination, organizational skills, and narrative skills. The benefits of storytelling are enhanced relationships and communication, and storytelling and restorying are important ways for individuals to build a complete and interconnected relationship with society. Restorying is one of the important channels of experience inheritance. When people look back on life, they will have a reminiscence bump, and the stage of a reminiscence bump can cause more intense and positive reactions. The elderly often play a story-telling role in real life, but the stories are not recorded and kept. Many of their experiences are worth exploring, and more records and preservation can be provided by the popularization of modern digital audio and video equipment.

This is a pilot study for a future study on VR nostalgia situations, which is used in the reminiscence therapy of the elderly to allow them to tell their stories with a more specific direction of audiovisual content, and helps the elderly to further stimulate their memories. Therefore, at this research stage, we hope to video record the stories of the elderly, extract their narrative concepts, and understand the narratives of their life experiences. The topics discussed in the study are: 1) What is the relationship between the elderly in Taiwan and their background of local life? 2) What factors affect the life concept and thinking of the elderly? 3) Are there specific background factors that affect the social function and psychological significance of the elderly? The early development of Taiwan was from south to north, thus, the development of the southern region of Taiwan has great significance. Therefore, this study was aimed at elderly people in southern Taiwan, used their oral narratives to express stories, and recorded and analyzed the context of elderly people’s memory stories. This study explored the life course of elderly people by recording their stories, in order to leave their precious human story assets for families and society. The follow-up research will further sort out the narrative structure of elderly people’s storytelling, and develop it into story contents worthy of preservation.

2 Literature Review

2.1 Life Story

Sobol et al. (2004) mentioned that storytelling is a basic human ability and an element of human nature. Storytelling is a basic medium that plays a fundamental role, maintains human culture, and enables elements of humanity. Storytelling is a very important part of the human pursuit of the meaning of life, it is a way for humans to inherit culture and wisdom, and is an experience inheritance activity in fact. Randall and McKim (2004, 2008) mentioned that understanding the meaning of life through life stories more fully reflects the meaning of “aesthetics”, because life is like a storyline, and the storyline is like life, thus, the more you listen to the story, the more you can experience poetic aging, and then, understand the meaning of life.

Dempsey et al. (2014) mentioned that life review is a process that occurs at different stages and involves recalling the interactions between early life events and individuals, and there is very little difference between a life story and a life history. The difference between a life story and an oral history is usually emphasis and scope. An oral history most often focuses on a specific aspect of a person’s life, which most often focuses on the community or what someone remembers about a specific event, issue, time, or place, thus, it is usually referred to as a life story or a life history. A life story is a fairly complete narration of one’s entire life experience as a whole, and highlights the most important aspects (Atkinson 1998). Kenyon (2002) emphasized that storytelling and restorying are important for individuals to build a complete and interconnected relationship with society, and to find the meaning and value of life through stories.

Autobiographical Memory is the experience and memory related to an individual’s past experience or events. Brockmeier and Carbaugh (2001) pointed out that autobiographical memory is a conscious feature of humans. Autobiographical memory consists of two components: semantic memory and episodic memory. Semantic memory is a link to a specific event at a specific time; episodic memory is an event at a specific time and place. Autobiographical memory allows you to define yourself and construct meaningful life stories (El Haj et al. 2016). Therefore, the elderly’ experiences, deeds, and achievements, and missing relatives, friends, and hometowns can be explored through autobiographical memory for their thinking and narrative context. This study hoped to show the impact of life stories on the elderly via their participation in the storytelling process of their life stories, as well as their perception of the review, narration, organizational and narrative abilities, and to reaffirm their lives’ value through the recognition of storytelling.

2.2 The Benefit of Storied Therapy

White and Epston (1990) mentioned that narrative plays a central role in therapy. Storied therapy tells a person’s lived experience, invites a reflexive posture, and encourages a sense of authorship and reauthorship of one’s experiences and relationships in the telling and retelling of one’s story. By telling stories, the elderly have the opportunity to reflect on their past life experiences, obtain a sense of self-satisfaction and joy, and increase their self-esteem, while simultaneously building healthy relationships with others in the process of sharing. It can even awaken past successful experiences of coping with sadness through the process of happy memories at the psychological level, and assist in coping with stress (Kovach 1991). Telling one’s own life experience has the possibilities of self-healing, self-reflecting, and liberating functions, and helps to demonstrate their inner positioning. If experience is narrated as a story, life can have meaning and continuity, and people will feel that life is meaningful; however, most life experience is not expressed as stories, but left in its original place, without organization (White and Epston 1990). Therefore, if a story can be expressed, it will guide the elderly to review their past life and re-experience fragments of their past life, which will further be indirectly converted into psychological therapy through storied therapy, assist the elderly to understand themselves, reduce feelings of loss, increase self-esteem, and promote socialization (Taylor-Price 1995).

Guillemot and Urien (2010) mentioned six intrinsic motivations for the elderly to love narrating past things: flattering the ego, mending the ego, being remembered, sharing, transmitting, and bearing witness, and their views illustrate the establishment of self-confidence. Elderly people have the wisdom to accept themselves, unify the past, and think that their life course is meaningful (Erikson et al. 1994). Nostalgic narrative uses past events, feelings, and thoughts to guide the elderly to review their life and re-experience fragments of their life, and it contains important values: 1) personal self-identification; 2) rebuilding the integrity of life through memories; 3) affirming oneself through the past.

Pan et al. (2018) mentioned that storytelling is a form of active reminiscing that compiles the personal information told by an individual into a chronicle of their life, and presents it by oneself. In actual life, while the elderly often play a role of storyteller, their stories have not been recorded or preserved. Restorying is one of the important channels of experience inheritance. The elderly can tell their story more clearly by recording their story. This study focuses on exploring the experience of participatory storytelling, which is achieved through direct participant involvement in the production of the narrative.

3 Method

In this study, the content of autobiographical memory was analyzed in the context of elderly narratology, and qualitative research was performed using NVIVO qualitative analysis software to explore the coherence, correspondence, and correlation analysis of patients’ narrative content.

3.1 Research Questions

By remembering stories, elders can provide researchers with information about the social reality existing outside the story; a story can define an individual’s place in the social order of things and explain or confirm the experience through the moral, ethical, or social context of a given situation (Atkinson 1998). Therefore, this research explores the background factors that affect the life thinking of elderly people living in southern Taiwan. The research questions are mainly to understand the relationship between Taiwan’s elderly people and the local living background. What influences their life concepts and thinking? Are they influenced by specific background factors?

3.2 Data Processing and Analysis

This research is based on qualitative research for data processing, and the process is shown in Fig. 1:

Fig. 1.
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Qualitative research data processing flow

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3.3 Interview Process

The research tools used in this research are mainly qualitative interviews. In order to understand the life growth stories of elderly people in Taiwan, the researchers used the interview outlines, as developed by themselves, to collect and understand the changes in the subjects and analyze them.

The research subjects were elderly people. Considering the physical and mental conditions at the time of the interview, there was no limit on the length of the interview, and it was subject to the elders. In order to reduce the feelings of strangeness, the interviewers were the elderly’s family members. The content of the interviews began with their own related feelings and ideas, as based on the defined research questions. First, 3 interview principles were set, such as: The happiest thing that occurred in their life? The saddest thing that occurred in their life? What is the thing that impressed them the most?, etc.

When the interview was conducted, the researcher recorded the entire interview process with DV and a mobile phone, and wrote a verbatim draft after the interview for analysis.

3.4 Participants

Purposive sampling was adopted for the respondents in this study. There were a total of 4 males and 3 females, aged between 69–87 years, with an average age of 80.5 years, all living in southern Taiwan, and having the ability to express themselves in Taiwanese. There was no time limit for storytelling, thus, the total time was 92 min and 14 s, with an average time of about 23 min per person (Table 1). The choice of venues was to avoid unfamiliarity affecting their emotions, and the venues were all familiar living spaces. During the interview, the elderly were encouraged to tell their own stories and share their past experiences. After the interviews, the data were converted verbatim, and the analysis tool was the Nvivo 12 plus version software, which assists in the qualitative study of case analysis and classifies the context of the homogeneous story for visualization analysis in qualitative research. Opening code data was initially coded with NVivo 12, and then, exported to and analyzed by NVivo 12, which was conducted between September 2019 and January 2020. The history of the guided life review has unified all segments of life in the analysis of audiovisual and textual records, making it meaningful.

Table 1. Basic information of participants
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3.5 Data Processing

The research data was coded, and organized to form categories and topics and to seek interpretation, and finally, it was analyzed and discussed. NVivo was used to administer data and literature, and to code the variety of sources used. In this study interview transcripts are used to capture, organize, and analyze. (1) Transcribing verbatim text: The audio content and transcripts, as produced during the interviews, were transcribed as verbatim text, and oral and non-verbal speech were added. (2) Coding: Nodes and memos of the original data, as collected during the research process, were produced to facilitate interpretation and analysis of subsequent research. (3) Analysis and discussion: organization and visualization.

4 Result and Discussion

4.1 Respondents’ Environmental Background

Taiwan was under Japanese colonial rule for 50 years (1895–1945), which was an important life experience for the elderly who were born before the war and received Japanese education. Such elderly people are now over 80 years old and are gradually dying

4.2 Analysis of Respondents’ Node Content

This research focused on the interview contents of 4 respondents (Table 2) to understand the impact of the context of their growing age through their life stories. According to the verbatim version of the interviews, it was classified into three parts: personal information, group relationship, and time and society (Fig. 2–Fig. 3):

Table 2. Shows the codes of 4 respondents.
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Fig. 2.
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Interview verbatim classification

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Fig. 3.
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Interview verbatim classification

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The number of nodes for the four respondents in the three parts after analysis of the verbatim contents is shown in Table 3.

Table 3. Number of nodes for verbatim categories of respondents
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Analysis of Node Content of Respondent E1.

E1 is male, and the discussion focus was: N-08: outlook on life (41.5%), N-02: Republic of China education (21.8%), N-13: Taiwanese social status (16.5%), and N-09: personal relationship (14.8%) (Fig. 4). Men usually have more subjective judgments regarding their outlook on life or values.

Fig. 4.
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Respondent’s node content distribution

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E1: When children notice that adults have something, they learn to be like the adults after they grow up, so adults’ influence on children is to teach by personal example…

Elderly likes to talk about social status and educational perspectives.

E1: Life was hard in the past, but it was actually a bit concrete.

E1 was born after the war, so he had not received any Japanese education; however, there was profound talk regarding the development of Taiwan as a whole after the war.

E1: All of us, cramming education …, Taiwanese teachers always said: You are stupid, it is useless to teach a stupid kid, useless! We are tired of teaching …

Analysis of Node Content of Respondent E2.

E2 is female, and the discussion focus was: N-11: social status during Japanese Occupation Period (29.4%), N-09: relatives (18.5%), N-01: Japanese education (13.4%), and N-13: Taiwanese social status (10.7%) (Fig. 5).

Fig. 5.
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Respondent’s node content distribution

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She was 86 years old, and had received Japanese and Taiwanese education after the war. She was deeply impressed with the social state during the period of Japanese rule, and had good memories.

E2: Japanese seem to have better quality … it was not so good just after liberation, it was messy.

E2 was part of a big family, and their economic conditions during the Japanese rule were better than that of ordinary Taiwanese people.

E2: My family used to run a rice factory, so there was no problem having rice to eat ...

She continued to finish her studies in junior high school, which can be regarded as a good education in an agricultural society. Comparing society under Japanese rule and Taiwanese society after the war, she naturally put forward corresponding views and comments.

Analysis of Node Content of Respondent E3.

E3 is a female, and the discussion focus was: N-05: belief (25.6%), N-06: happiness and joy (19.9%), N-01: Japanese education (8.6%), N-02: Republic of China education (8.3%) (Fig. 6).

Fig. 6.
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Respondent’s node content distribution

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At the age of 85, she had the highest education among the 4 respondents and graduated from senior high school. Faith is her focus.

E3: I am a very devout Christian … I go to church diligently, attend a choir, youth fellowship, and go to church every time.

Her devout faith affected her concept of marriage in girlhood and her focus in old age. She had clear expressions of both happy and sad things that occurred in her life.

E3: The happiest was when I went abroad in my 60s, I felt free! I was all by myself then; the most painful was when I first married, because my family was better-off, while my husband’s family was poor.

She received Japanese education until the fourth grade of elementary school, and completed her 5th and 6th grades in elementary school and middle school education after the war. In addition to religious and emotional matters, there was a brief and clear expression of each stage of education.

E3: I continued to study in elementary school after two years of war, and then, it was six years of middle school. This was my girlhood.

Analysis of Node Content of Respondent E4.

E4 is female, and her discussion focus was: N-09: relatives (58.0%), N-07: sadness and regret (23.6%), N-03: the Evergreen Seniors’ School (9.9%), N-06: happiness and joy (5.2%) (Fig. 7).

Fig. 7.
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Respondent’s node content distribution

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Her growth and life were relatively simple and hardworking, and she has strong affection for her family. She affirmed her son’s honesty and hard work during the conversation.

E4: Your father, your uncle, your aunt, the second aunt, they are all good and don’t need me to worry about them … your dad and your uncle are kind and excellent.

She paid a lot of attention to the life status of her loved ones. The death of her loved ones made her feel sad.

E4: My sister and my brother-in-law were on good terms with him, but they both passed away, and my aunt is also dead, and my third sister-in-law is dead, my third aunt is blind now ...

Her simple life is also shown in the focus of talking about relatives and fewer nodes.

4.3 Comparative Analysis of Relevant Factors Affecting Respondents

Figure 8 shows a comparison of the related factors of two elderly respondents: E2 and E3. They were 86 and 85 years old, respectively, and with senior high school education. They both received Japanese education in elementary school, and the impact is far-reaching. E2 has a clear view of the different societies before and after the war, and talked more about loved ones. E3 is obviously affected by religion, and talked more about the process of studying.

Fig. 8.
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Comparison of related factors between elderly respondants E2 and E3

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E3: When I was in elementary school, the Chang Jung Senior High School was near the elementary school. Every morning, I would hear beautiful poems from there, so I would say then that I want to study in this middle school in the future.

The two shared life memories of avoiding air raids during World War II.

E2: When the United States came to bomb Taiwan, I was still in school and I ran to the air-raid shelter.

E3: All were running away from air raids one after another, but I am not very good at speaking Japanese, as Japanese was only taught until the 4th grade, and we were all busy hiding from the air-raids at that time.

Better family economic conditions tend to lead to higher education level. Both E2 and E3 had a good family background, thus, their educational backgrounds are junior high school and senior high school, respectively. Most Taiwanese seniors of the same generation only finished elementary school, while some received no education! A good growth environment is also reflected in the value of experience in life. The number of nodes represents the diversity of life experience; the number of nodes for respondents E1 is 8, E2 is 12, E3 is 11, and E4 is 6. The number of nodes for E2 and E3 are the largest, and the life stories are richer and more diverse. The life experiences of these two seniors validates Atkinson’s (1998) theory: The individual ego can be strong only through a mutual guarantee of strength given to and received by all whose life-cycles intertwine. Whatever chance man may have to transcend the limitations of his ego seems to depend on his prior ability, in his one and only life cycle, to be fully engaged in the sequence of generations.

4.4 Analysis of Influencing Factors of Storied Therapy

Narrating one’s life experience can have the functions of self-healing, reflection, and liberation. Narratives can provide the possibility and opportunity to liberate oneself and reflect, and help one show his or her inner positioning.

E3: When I were 65 years old, I traveled abroad with my church members because my husband had died. I went to China 3 times, Japan 4 times, and visited Indonesia, the Philippines, Korea, Canada, the United States, and other countries.

She stated that these were her happiest memories, because she had freedom.

While the birth environment cannot be selected, the opportunities for education in Taiwan are relatively equal, thus, striving for higher education is still a very important condition for future development in life.

E1: I don’t think my education is high. If my child wants to be competitive in society, he must be given a good education.

Regardless of their situation, expecting the next generation to be better is a common wish of the elderly.

E1: I think we should now be thinking of advancing the country, and if we make more efforts, our next generation will be better than us.

It is not necessary to make a lot of money, so they can be more in line with social norms when it comes to dealing with people.

E4: I don’t want my children to be a borough chief or other official, it is fine as long as they go the right way.

Nostalgia can maintain personal self-identity. Nostalgia is often caused by insecurity due to anxiety or uncertainty. The elderly can maintain stable psychological emotion through nostalgia, thus avoiding perplexity and helplessness.

E4: The hardest thing was that my husband went out to gamble, then I couldn’t sleep all night, and I had to help her husband plow the field …

5 Conclusion

Life stories and personal narratives are increasingly being used in a wide range of disciplines. Through different particular topics or questions, when learning more about the elderly’ lives and society in general from one person’s perspective, life stories serve as an excellent means for understanding how people see their experiences, their lives, and their interactions with others. In particular, it is possible to continue to explore the influence of the connection between the elderly and the local culture.

The process of life review can usually be viewed from a rational and objective point of view. The importance of certain things can also be understood from the life stories or past events that elderly people often repeat, and the elderly will often find their own importance in such narration. Through nostalgic narratives, we can guide elderly people to review their lives, in order that they can have opportunities for self-reflection, emancipation, and showing their self-positioning, which is the function of storied therapy. The values include: personal self-identification, rebuilding the integrity of life through memories, and self-affirmation from reviewing the past. Storied therapy will help the elderly reposition themselves in their life.

This study provides further insights into the storytelling experiences of elderly lives to evaluate the impact of active reminiscing. The prospective impact of this study is to create a process for people to narrate their life to gain potential personal and family benefits. The results of this study provide further references for the future development of VR narrative scripts for the elderly in Taiwan.