Event memory and moving in a well-known environment

Abstract

Research in narrative comprehension has repeatedly shown that when people read about characters moving in well-known environments, the accessibility of object information follows a spatial gradient. That is, the accessibility of objects is best when they are in the same room as the protagonist, and it becomes worse the farther away they are see, e.g., Morrow, Greenspan, & Bower, (Journal of Memory and Language, 26, 165-187, 1987). In the present study, we assessed this finding using an interactive environment in which we had people memorize a map and navigate a virtual simulation of the area. During navigation, people were probed with pairs of object names and indicated whether both objects were in the same room. In contrast to the narrative studies described above, several experiments showed no evidence of a clear spatial gradient. Instead, memory for objects in currently occupied locations (e.g., the location room) was more accessible, especially after a small delay, but no clear decline was evident in the accessibility of information in memory with increased distance. Also, memory for objects along the pathway of movement (i.e., rooms that a person only passed through) showed a transitory suppression effect that was present immediately after movement, but attenuated over time. These results were interpreted in light of the event horizon model of event cognition.

Cross-codal integration of bridging-event information in narrative understanding

“…This is also true for the processing of spatial relations. It was shown that reading a text describing the spatial locations of objects within a building (Morrow, Greenspan, & Bower, 1987 ) and navigating within a (pictorial) virtual environment (Tamplin, Krawietz, Radvansky, & Copeland, 2013 ) resulted in profound differences in memory performance. In particular, whereas reading led to the effect that the accessibility of information about read objects decreased with increasing distance, navigating through the same virtual environment showed no spatial gradient for object memory.…”

“…In particular, whereas reading led to the effect that the accessibility of information about read objects decreased with increasing distance, navigating through the same virtual environment showed no spatial gradient for object memory. Instead, object memory was highest for objects in the same (location) room but lower for objects in previously visited rooms (Tamplin et al, 2013 ).…”

“…Taken together, although narrative understanding is assumed to be a process that is independent of stimulus codality (Gernsbacher et al, 1990 ), there are also reasons to consider that each codality (i.e., text-based, pictorial) entails different processing strategies (e.g., Tamplin et al 2013 ) that might also influence cross-codal integration in narrative understanding. Apart from a notable exception (Manfredi et al, 2017 ), there is no study on cross-codal integration effects in the domain of narrative understanding.…”

Cross-Codal Integration of Bridging Event Information in Narrative Understanding

“…Instead, object memory was highest for objects in the same (location) room but lower for objects in previously visited rooms (Tamplin et al, 2013).…”

Event boundaries and anaphoric reference

“…), sorting tasks (Zwaan, Langston, & Graesser, 1995a), probe identification tasks (e.g., Radvansky, Copeland, Berish, & Dijkstra, 2003;Zwaan, 1996), and priming studies (Ezzyat & Davachi, 2011). Moreover, this sort of event segmentation applies not only to reading comprehension but also to the comprehension and processing of film (e.g., Magliano & Zacks, 2011;Zacks et al, 2009) and interactive virtual environments (e.g., Copeland, Magliano, & Radvansky, 2006;Tamplin, Krawietz, Radvansky, & Copeland, 2013).…”