Event boundaries and memory improvement

Pettijohn, Kyle A.; Thompson, Alexis N.; Tamplin, Andrea K.; Krawietz, Sabine A.; Radvansky, Gabriel A.

doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2015.12.013

Cited by 74 publications

(63 citation statements)

References 36 publications

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“…For example, it may be that when the cause of a shift is easily connected to the current model, it is easier to incorporate the new information, and there would be better recall of previously encountered information than there otherwise would be following some delay. Previous research has found that people remember more information from texts that contain a shift than those that do not (Pettijohn, Thompson, Tamplin, Krawietz, & Radvansky, 2016). Reducing the amount of effort needed to process a shift may impact the amount of information subsequently remembered.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Narrative event boundaries, reading times, and expectation

Pettijohn

Radvansky

2016

Mem Cogn

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During text comprehension, readers create mental representations of the described events, called situation models. When new information is encountered, these models must be updated or new ones created. Consistent with the event indexing model, previous studies have shown that when readers encounter an event shift, reading times often increase. However, such increases are not consistently observed. This paper addresses this inconsistency by examining the extent to which reading-time differences observed at event shifts reflect an unexpectedness in the narrative rather than processes involved in model updating. In two reassessments of prior work, event shifts known to increase reading time were rated as less expected, and expectedness ratings significantly predicted reading time. In three new experiments, participants read stories in which an event shift was or was not foreshadowed, thereby influencing expectedness of the shift. Experiment 1 revealed that readers do not expect event shifts, but foreshadowing eliminates this. Experiment 2 showed that foreshadowing does not affect identification of event shifts. Finally, Experiment 3 found that, although reading times increased when an event shift was not foreshadowed, they were not different from controls when it was. Moreover, responses to memory probes were slower following an event shift regardless of foreshadowing, suggesting that situation model updating had taken place. Overall, the results support the idea that previously observed reading time increases at event shifts reflect, at least in part, a reader's unexpected encounter with a shift rather than an increase in processing effort required to update a situation model.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Narrative event boundaries, reading times, and expectation

Pettijohn

Radvansky

2016

Mem Cogn

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“…Memory for temporal duration specific to each event benefited from the presence of a boundary, likely due to increased discriminability of event-specific information (Pettijohn et al, 2016;Zacks, Tversky, & Iyer, 2001). In contrast, when comparing two ordinal positions, the presence of a boundary numerically disrupted discrimination (DuBrow & Davachi, 2013;Horner et al, 2016).…”

Section: Experiments 1 Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This disruption would impair the ordinal discrimination of events along a route. In contrast, duration discrimination would be enhanced because this perturbation in contextual drift accentuates details specific to events on either side of the boundary, increasing their discriminability (Pettijohn et al, 2016).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In contrast, the perturbation in contextual drift caused by a boundary should accentuate details specific to an event, such as event duration. Durations of individual events should therefore be more discriminable from one another when the events are separated by a boundary (Pettijohn et al, 2016).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A computational model of this cross-boundary memory disruption suggests that the rate of temporal context drift is increased immediately following boundaries (Horner et al, 2016), effectively adding noise to information essential for temporal order judgements. However, when information on either side of a boundary represents a cohesive unit, boundaries actually improve memory by providing structure (Pettijohn, Thompson, Tamplin, Krawietz, & Radvansky, 2016), which might be supported by a peak in hippocampal activity between events (Baldassano et al, 2017;Ben-Yakov & Dudai, 2011). Boundaries therefore differentially affect different memory aspects.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Does a turn in the road mark a turn of events? Turns along travelled routes provide contextual boundaries during navigation

Brunec¹,

Ozubko²,

Ander³

et al. 2018

Preprint

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Physical or conceptual boundaries segment continuous experience into component events. Boundaries accentuate differences between events that occur on either side of them, and reduce differences among events within them. Here we show that turns during navigation have the same effect on memory for routes as they do for episodes. Across three experiments, turns selectively enhanced participants' recollection of locations immediately preceding them. In addition, in Experiments 1 and 2, the presence of an intervening turn enhanced participants' ability to discriminate between event durations across boundaries, but impaired their ability to discriminate between their ordinal positions. In Experiment 3, the reported increase in recollection of pre-turn locations was also reflected in subjective dilation of the time spent at preturn, relative to post-turn, locations. Together, these results highlight the fundamental role of turns in the segmentation of spatial and temporal memory and indicate a potential mechanism for the segmentation of experience generally.

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Well‐being during COVID‐19‐related first lockdown: Relationship with autobiographical memory and experiential diversity

Folville

Willems

Cheriet

et al. 2023

Applied Cognitive Psychology

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In March 2020, the Belgian government ordered a complete lockdown as an attempt to decrease the progression of the COVID‐19. The aim of the present study was to examine lockdown‐related changes in psycho‐affective states as well as their relations with experiential diversity and autobiographical memory. A total of 186 Belgian citizens completed an online survey assessing lockdown‐related changes in various dimensions: work, leisure activities, affective state, sleep quality, fatigue, and autobiographical memory. Results revealed that well‐being during the lockdown was related to changes in experiential diversity and to the richness of participants' memories. Moreover, the content and the phenomenology of memories were more negative when memories pertained to the lockdown situation. These findings provide new evidence that mental well‐being of Belgian citizens during the first lockdown was related to how pandemic‐related sanitary constraints affected the diversity of activities that they could undertake.

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Event boundaries and memory improvement

Cited by 74 publications

References 36 publications

Narrative event boundaries, reading times, and expectation

Narrative event boundaries, reading times, and expectation

Does a turn in the road mark a turn of events? Turns along travelled routes provide contextual boundaries during navigation

Well‐being during COVID‐19‐related first lockdown: Relationship with autobiographical memory and experiential diversity

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