Narrative Coherence, Affective Coherence, and Resonance: Conceptual Distinctions and Empirical Anchors

Revised for academic style; empirical claims are explicitly referenced, and interpretive extensions are labelled as such.

Note on evidential status

To clarify the boundary between established evidence and theoretical interpretation, this note uses the following conventions. These are not universal labels, but practical markers for the discussion that follows.

• Empirical finding: A claim that is directly supported by peer‑reviewed empirical research or an authoritative scientific statement; a citation is provided.
• Inference: A plausible conclusion drawn from empirical findings, but not itself directly tested or uniquely supported by the cited studies; language is hedged accordingly.
• Theoretical proposal: A conceptual distinction or hypothesis intended to organise the evidence and generate testable predictions; it is not presented as an established fact.

1. Working definitions: affective coherence, resonance, and narrative coherence

The central conceptual move in the current hypothesis is to distinguish forms of coherence that may be widely shared across species (e.g., affective alignment) from forms that likely depend on language and culturally scaffolded self‑interpretation (e.g., narrative identity). The definitions below are offered as working terms rather than as settled constructs.

Affective coherence (theoretical proposal). 

Affective coherence refers to the felt integration of bodily and emotional signals—across interoception, perception, and action—into a relatively stable “sense of how things are going” for an organism. In humans, related constructs include affect attunement and biobehavioral synchrony in early attachment relationships (Stern, 1985; Feldman, 2012).

Resonance (theoretical proposal). 

Resonance refers to the dynamic coupling of two organisms’ (or agents’) behavioural and physiological patterns during interaction—e.g., temporal alignment of movement, gaze, vocal prosody, arousal, or turn‑taking. Resonance can be understood as a mechanism through which affective coherence is co‑regulated within dyads or groups.

Narrative coherence (theoretical proposal, with empirical links). 

Narrative coherence refers to the capacity to organize experience into temporally extended, causally structured accounts that are shareable, revisable, and norm‑governed within a community. In psychology, narrative identity frameworks treat personal stories as a key medium through which people integrate past, present, and anticipated future into a sense of self (McAdams, 2001).

2. Human–animal attunement: evidence for resonance without implying shared narrative

A recurring question is whether apparent “communication” between humans and non‑human animals is best interpreted as (i) shared narrative understanding or (ii) resonance‑based alignment that supports prediction and coordination. The existing evidence more directly supports the second interpretation.

Empirical anchors. 

In domestic dogs, controlled studies have reported interspecific behavioural synchrony with humans (e.g., dogs aligning locomotor patterns with a human partner during joint movement), consistent with a capacity to coordinate actions in time (Duranton et al., 2017). More recent work has also reported behavioural and physiological co‑modulation during dog–owner interaction, including coupling between activity and heart‑rate variability measures, suggesting partial alignment of arousal during social contact (Koskela et al., 2024).

Inference. 

Behavioural or physiological synchrony does not, by itself, license the conclusion that the interacting organisms share an explicit narrative representation of the interaction. Synchrony can arise through attention, reinforcement history, learned cues, and basic social coordination mechanisms. It is therefore methodologically safer to treat such findings as evidence for resonance and co‑regulation, while remaining agnostic about narrative capacities unless separate evidence is provided.

Theoretical proposal. 

On the current hypothesis, humans may experience a “sense of communication” with an animal when their own affective coherence stabilizes through effective co‑regulation: breath, posture, vocal tone, pacing, and attention become mutually constrained. A subsequent autobiographical explanation (a narrative about “what the animal meant”) may be a human interpretive layer placed on top of the resonance process.

3. Consciousness across species: affective consciousness is evidentially broader than narrative selfhood

The second issue is how to relate narrative coherence to consciousness and to moral consideration. Here it is useful to separate (a) evidence about conscious experience in non‑human animals from (b) evidence about specifically narrative forms of self‑interpretation.

Empirical anchors: neurobiological and comparative perspectives. 

An influential scientific statement—the Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness—argues that many non‑human animals possess the neurological substrates that support conscious states, and that the absence of a neocortex does not preclude affective experience (Low et al., 2012). This statement is not the final word on animal consciousness, but it reflects a prominent position in comparative neuroscience that conscious states are not uniquely human.

Empirical anchors: episodic‑like memory and future‑directed behaviour. 

Some non‑human species show behavioural capacities that resemble components often associated with narrative cognition (e.g., representing temporally extended events). For example, scrub jays show behavioural evidence meeting ‘what‑where‑when’ criteria during cache recovery, a pattern described as episodic‑like memory (Clayton & Dickinson, 1998). In great apes, studies report future‑directed behaviour such as saving tools for later use (Mulcahy & Call, 2006) and selecting tools in advance of a delayed task in ways interpreted as forethought (Osvath & Osvath, 2008).

Inference and limitation. 

These findings support the view that some animals can represent elements of time, contingency, and future needs. However, episodic‑like memory and tool saving do not entail that an animal constructs linguistically articulated life‑stories or negotiates shared narratives within a normative community. For that reason, it may be useful to treat such abilities as proto‑narrative components (inference) rather than as evidence of full narrative coherence in the human sense.

4. Moral attention: resonance, mind perception, and the risk of over‑privileging narrative

A key normative concern is whether moral consideration is (or should be) tied primarily to narrative coherence. Psychological research on mind perception suggests a more graded and multi‑dimensional picture.

Empirical anchors. 

Mind‑perception research indicates that people attribute minds along (at least) two partially independent dimensions: (i) experience (capacity for sensation/feeling) and (ii) agency (capacity for intention and self‑control). These dimensions, in turn, differentially predict moral standing: perceived experience is more strongly associated with attributions of moral rights and protection from harm, whereas perceived agency is more strongly associated with attributions of moral responsibility (Gray, Gray, & Wegner, 2007; Gray, Young, & Waytz, 2012).

Inference. 

On this basis, resonance with another being’s distress, comfort, or vulnerability may be sufficient to recruit moral concern even when narrative participation is absent or unclear. Narrative coherence may still matter for other moral practices—e.g., accountability, testimony, shared norms—but it is not the only route by which humans extend moral consideration.

Relevance to dementia (empirical anchors and inference). 

In dementia, narrative capacities can be significantly affected, including difficulties in constructing and communicating coherent stories, and this can be amplified by socially circulating ‘tragedy’ narratives that reduce opportunities for supported storytelling (Villar et al., 2019). At the same time, work on embodied selfhood argues that meaningful agency and self‑expression can persist through bodily habits, gesture, and relational engagement, with implications for person‑centred care (Kontos, 2005; Kitwood, 1997). This literature supports the inference that moral regard should not be contingent on preserved narrative coherence alone.

5. Star Trek as a cultural case study: ‘new life’ is often legible through narrative and normativity

The Star Trek franchise is a useful popular‑culture lens because it repeatedly dramatizes moral status questions about non‑human life and artificial agents. While the series does not propose a single explicit theory of consciousness, it frequently operationalizes ‘personhood’ through capacities that resemble narrative and normative participation (e.g., intelligibility, testimony, self‑description, rights‑bearing status).

Empirical anchors (textual evidence from the franchise). 

The opening narration’s mission statement—seeking ‘new life’ and ‘new civilizations’—frames discovery in terms of entities and communities that can be recognized as life and as social orders (Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, n.d.).

Several episodes explicitly stage debates about sentience, rights, or communicative intelligibility, for example:

• “The Measure of a Man” (TNG): Picard presses Maddox to articulate criteria for Data’s sentience (intelligence, self‑awareness, and a debated notion of consciousness). The episode treats the inability to precisely determine ‘consciousness’ as a key legal‑moral problem (Memory Alpha contributors, n.d.-a).
• “The Quality of Life” (TNG): Data argues that exocomps should not be treated as disposable tools if they exhibit self‑preservation and adaptive problem-solving; the episode leaves some ambiguity while foregrounding moral risk under uncertainty (Belt, 2024; Memory Alpha contributors, n.d.-b).
• “Author, Author” (VOY): A Federation tribunal considers whether the EMH Doctor has legal rights as an author and whether he counts as a ‘person under the law’, again using courtroom narrative as a vehicle for moral recognition (Memory Alpha contributors, n.d.-c).
• “Darmok” (TNG): Communication fails until Picard grasps that the Tamarian language is built from shared stories and metaphors; ‘understanding’ here is explicitly narrative and culturally embedded (Memory Alpha contributors, n.d.-d).
• “The Ultimate Computer” (TOS): The M‑5 system’s autonomy and self‑preservation are juxtaposed with catastrophic moral consequences, raising questions about control, responsibility, and machine ‘judgment’ (Memory Alpha contributors, n.d.-e).
• “Home Soil” and “Emergence” (TNG): Both episodes explore unfamiliar forms of life/intelligence that become morally salient when the crew can interact with them as agents (e.g., through negotiation, protection, or assistance) rather than as mere environmental hazards (Memory Alpha contributors, n.d.-f; Memory Alpha contributors, n.d.-g).

Inference. 

Across these examples, Star Trek repeatedly uses narrative exchange (court testimony, shared stories, intelligible communication) as a practical proxy for moral status in situations of uncertainty. This does not entail that narrative coherence is a necessary condition for consciousness; rather, it illustrates how humans often *recognise* and *institutionalise* moral standing through narrative and normative forms.

6. Synthesis: a multi‑level coherence framework (proposal)

A productive way to extend the original hypothesis is to treat ‘coherence’ as multi‑level rather than binary. The following is offered as a theoretical proposal that is broadly consistent with the cited evidence but would require operationalisation and testing.

• Level 1 — Affective coherence: Integration of bodily and affective signals that supports adaptive action and basic well‑/ill‑being. Likely widespread across species with affective neurobiology.
• Level 2 — Dyadic resonance: Interpersonal (or interspecies) coupling that co‑regulates affect (e.g., synchronised movement, shared arousal patterns). Empirically observable in human–human and human–dog interaction (Duranton et al., 2017; Koskela et al., 2024).
• Level 3 — Proto‑narrative capacities: Event memory and future‑oriented representations that support planning, inference, and flexible action in some species (Clayton & Dickinson, 1998; Mulcahy & Call, 2006; Osvath & Osvath, 2008).
• Level 4 — Narrative coherence and narrative agency: Linguistically scaffolded, socially negotiable life‑stories that support identity, accountability, and institutional participation. Well theorised in humans (McAdams, 2001) and demonstrably vulnerable in dementia (Villar et al., 2019).

On this framing, narrative coherence becomes one route to sophisticated social and moral coordination, but not a prerequisite for affective experience or for moral concern. A research‑ready next step would be to specify behavioural, linguistic, and physiological indicators at each level and test whether transitions between levels predict changes in moral attribution (e.g., rights vs. responsibility), as suggested by mind‑perception work.

References

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Duranton, C., Bedossa, T., & Gaunet, F. (2017). Interspecific behavioural synchronization: Dogs exhibit locomotor synchrony with humans. Scientific Reports, 7, 12384. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-12577-z

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Kitwood, T. (1997). Dementia reconsidered: The person comes first. Open University Press.

Kontos, P. C. (2005). Embodied selfhood in Alzheimer’s disease: Rethinking person-centred care. Dementia, 4(4), 553–570. https://doi.org/10.1177/1471301205058311

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Low, P., Panksepp, J., Reiss, D., Edelman, D., Van Swinderen, B., & Koch, C. (2012). The Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness. Francis Crick Memorial Conference on Consciousness in Human and non-Human Animals, University of Cambridge. https://fcmconference.org/img/CambridgeDeclarationOnConsciousness.pdf

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