Many children’s hospitals already have storytelling programmes that aim to cheer up patients. But new research suggests that storytelling also has physiological benefits. “Until now, the positive evidence for storytelling was based on ‘common sense’ that interacting with the child may distract, entertain and reduce psychological suffering,” said Dr Jorge Moll, of D’Or Institute for Research and Education (IDOR), Brazil. “But there was a lack of a solid scientific basis.”
“During storytelling, something happens that we call ‘narrative transportation’. The child, through fantasy, can experience sensations and thoughts that transport him or her to another world, a place that is different from the hospital room, and is, therefore, far from the unpleasant conditions of hospitalization,” says Guilherme Brockington.
The team, based at IDOR and the Federal University of ABC, Brazil, studied 81 children between the ages of two and seven, all of whom were in the intensive care unit (ICU) at a hospital in São Paulo. A group of 41 children each had a session with a storyteller, lasting 25 to 30 minutes. A control group of 40 children each had the same amount of time with the same professionals, but they told riddles instead. Before and after the sessions, the team took saliva samples from each child and assessed their pain level. The saliva samples allowed the researchers to measure levels of the hormone cortisol, which is related to stress, and the hormone oxytocin, which plays a role in empathy.
Both groups of children benefited from the sessions: they all had less cortisol and more oxytocin in their saliva, suggesting they were less stressed, and they reported less pain and discomfort. However, the results were twice as strong for the storytelling group as the control group. At the end of the sessions, the children also took part in a word-association exercise including words like ‘hospital’, ‘nurse’ and ‘doctor’. The team said that children from the control group said “this is the bad woman who comes to give me an injection” in response to the pictures of a doctor or a nurse, while the storytelling group said “this is the woman who comes to cure me”.
“I consider this study to be one of the most important I have participated in, due to its potential direct impact on practices in the hospital environment, aiming at the relief of human suffering. We intend to support volunteering devoted to the noble activity of storytelling, now with more solid scientific evidence,” said Moll.
【小题1】According to the passage, “narrative transportation” indicates children _______.| A．feel that they are placed into the world of a story |
| B．fire up their imagination and expand their horizons |
| C．have more empathy with the characters in the stories |
| D．experience the unpleasant conditions of hospitalization |
| A．the application of the research | B．the purpose of the research |
| C．the limitation of the research | D．the process of the research |
| A．By making comparisons. | B．By giving definitions. |
| C．By presenting examples. | D．By analyzing cause and effect. |
| A．A hospital is the place where I go when I’m very sick. |
| B．A hospital is the place where I get an injection in my arm. |
| C．A hospital is the place where I am taken care of to feel better. |
| D．A hospital is the place where I’ll have to take some medicine. |
