Retrieval context determines whether event boundaries impair or enhance temporal order memory

Abstract

Meaningful changes in context create "event boundaries", segmenting continuous experience into distinct episodes in memory. A foundational finding in this literature is that event boundaries impair memory for the temporal order of stimuli spanning a boundary compared to equally spaced stimuli within an event. This seems surprising in light of intuitions about memory in everyday life, where the order of within-event experiences (did I have coffee before the first bite of bagel?) often seems more difficult to recall than the order of events per se (did I have breakfast or do the dishes first?). Here, we aimed to resolve this discrepancy by manipulating whether stimuli carried information about their encoding context during retrieval, as they often do in everyday life (e.g., bagel-breakfast). In Experiments 1 and 2, we show that stimuli inherently associated with a unique encoding context produce a "flipped" order memory effect, whereby temporal memory was superior for cross-boundary than within-event item pairs. In Experiments 3 and 4, we added context information at retrieval to a standard laboratory event memory protocol where stimuli were encoded in the presence of arbitrary context cues (colored frames). We found that whether temporal order memory for cross-boundary stimuli was enhanced or impaired relative to within-event items depended on whether the context was present or absent during the memory test. Taken together, we demonstrate that the effect of event boundaries on temporal memory is malleable, and determined by the availability of context information at retrieval.

Acoustic features drive event segmentation in speech.

“…Together, these data suggest that speaker transitions serve to diminish temporal order performance across these boundaries while concurrently improving source attribution at event boundaries, indicating a potential trade-off between these memory processes. This finding from audition provides direct quantitative confirmation of event segmentation effects identified in visual encoding paradigms, which construct perceptual events through embedding images in colored frames or through using image categories (e.g., objects and faces; Heusser et al, 2018; Sols et al, 2017; Wen & Egner, 2022).…”

“…The current paradigm addresses limitations in the ecological validity of typical approaches by allowing participants to encode the stimuli without explicit task instructions or suggested strategy on the part of the experimenter. This divergence from previous research isolates the effect of perceptual context unconfounded by task-related changes across event boundaries (e.g., when participants are asked to provide subjective ratings with respect to stimulus features; (Clewett et al, 2020;DuBrow & Davachi, 2016;Heusser et al, 2018Heusser et al, , 2016Pu et al, 2022;Sols et al, 2017;Wen & Egner, 2022). Furthermore, this approach allows us to examine how unprompted mnemonic strategies influence both overall memory performance as well as event segmentation behavior.…”

Memory out of context: Spacing effects and decontextualization in a computational model of the medial temporal lobe

“…One limitation of HipSTeR is that drift-driven contextual change is simulated as a slow, passive process that is constant per unit time. However, context can also shift more rapidly (DuBrow et al, 2017), which often occurs with sudden input changes or shifts in perceived events (Antony et al, 2021; Baldassano et al, 2017; Bright et al, 2020; Brunec, Moscovitch, & Barense, 2018; Brunec et al, 2020; Clewett, Dubrow, & Davachi, 2019; Cohn-Sheehy et al, 2021; DuBrow & Davachi, 2013, 2014, 2016; Griffiths & Fuentemilla, 2020; Lu, Hasson, & Norman, 2020; Michelmann et al, 2021; Rouhani et al, 2020; Wen & Egner, 2022; Zacks, Speer, Swallow, Braver, & Reynolds, 2007). In other words, in addition to slow drifts there are faster shifts, which allow setting up “walls” between dissimilar situational contexts nearby in time and “bridges” to similar situational contexts apart in time (Clewett et al, 2019; Cohn-Sheehy et al, 2021).…”