Storytelling therapy in children

National Geographic paper accessible here https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/storytelling-and-cultural-traditions

Oral transmission of knowledge and storytelling is a pillar institution in some cultures, especially Africa but not only. Speech is a specifically Human skill and is essential in education, initiation, communication or knowledge transmission in general.

Verbal communication has an impact that written communication does not have.
Written communication can be ambiguous, whereas oral communication allows to stress and accentuate some words or syllable, which adds supplementary information to prevent confusion - for example, the sentence “I did not go to the party because she was there” can refer to two situations: (1) I came to the party, but it was not because she was there or (2) I did not come to the party, precisely because she was there and I did not want to see her.

Written communication also requires a certain level of education, the ability to concentrate for a long time, memorise and articulate dense written content, and often to self-isolate. As such, it is not accessible to everyone.

Those who are used to teach have noticed how much an oral lecture is effective compared with guidelines or a lecture written on a simple pdf - and this, regardless of the age of the audience. Oral transmission seems to have somethin else, something warmer that kind of facilitates the learning.

Why is oral transmission more effective? Why politicians and leaders are required to have oral communication skills? And why is the tale format so easy to listen and remember compared with an essay? Why religious or spiritual knowledges among cultures are always delivered through mythology?

A bunch of data accumulates and suggest that our brain primarily is hardwired for social interactions, and therefore the “social format” is our preferred one because the most natural. Physical or Metaphysical forces represented by characters are not only easy but pleasant to learn about. When spoken, language becomes a social interaction and as such triggers or activates specific neuromodulatory and hormonal signalling pathways - oxytcin, arginine, vasopressin, to cite the most known.

Social interactions are so important, that they impact every aspect of our mental and physical wellbeing (see my ongoing lecture series on the Social Sense). As such, oral transmission and storytelling also are a powerful social bond builder and can even make us feel better and live better.

This paper, published in May 2021 in PNAS, investigated the physiological and psychological impact of storytelling and provides evidence of “biomarker changes and beneficial effects of storytelling in children admitted to an intensive care unit”. Compared with a riddle game activity, one storytelling session with hospitalized children leads to an increase in oxytocin, a reduction in cortisol and pain, and positive emotional shifts during a free-association task. See charts below.

The more I do science, the more I come to think that traditional cultures have been built upon centuries of wisdom and applied knowledge, simple and powerful.

Original paper accessible here https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2018409118#fig02