Temporal changes as event boundaries: Processing and memory consequences of narrative time shifts

doi:10.1016/j.jml.2005.02.009

Journal of Memory and Language

Volume 53, Issue 1, July 2005, Pages 125-140

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2005.02.009 Get rights and content

Abstract

Readers comprehend narrative texts by constructing a series of mental models of the situations described in the text. These models are updated when readers encounter information indicating that the current model is no longer relevant, such as a change in narrative time. The results of four experiments suggest that readers perceive temporal changes in narrative texts as event boundaries, and that when a temporal change is encountered during reading, readers are slower and less able to accurately retrieve prior information from memory. However, the slower responses following temporal changes may be due to processing costs associated with the temporal change, rather than decreased availability in memory. The results of these experiments suggest that readers may use event boundaries as a means for controlling the contents of memory.

Section snippets

Experiment 1

The first experiment used an event segmentation procedure to test the hypothesis that temporal changes in narrative text are explicitly perceived as event boundaries. In a typical event segmentation paradigm, participants watch a movie of an everyday event, and are asked to segment the activity in the movie by pressing a button when they believe one meaningful unit of activity ends and another begins (Newtson, 1973). This segmentation procedure has been shown to reliably measure perceptual

Experiment 2

In standard memory paradigms involving the retention of lists of words or digits, it is well established that greater amounts of intervening information, rather than a longer duration, between an item and its subsequent reappearance lead to a greater likelihood that the original information will be forgotten (Waugh & Norman, 1965). However, the situation model view advocated here suggests that in narrative reading, it may be that neither time nor the sheer amount of intervening information is

Experiment 3

The results of Experiment 2 establish that temporal changes in narratives can influence the ability to retrieve prior information from memory. However, the explicit recognition paradigm used in Experiment 2 and in studies by other researchers differs in many ways from the normal process of reading. To generalize the results of these studies to discourse comprehension, it is necessary to know whether temporal changes influence memory retrieval in ongoing discourse. Therefore, the current

Experiment 4

Experiment 2 established that in a direct memory test, accuracy for identifying previously presented objects is reduced following a temporal change, and Experiment 3 found that anaphoric references to those objects were slower following a temporal change. One possibility is that the slower anaphor reading times observed in Experiment 3 are the result of the reduced memory found in Experiment 2. However, an alternative possibility is that the memory accuracy and reading time effects are both

General discussion

The first goal of the current series of studies was to determine whether readers perceive temporal changes as event boundaries between consecutive episodes of activity in narrative text. The results clearly suggest that they do. Readers were more likely to perceive an event boundary at the points at which a temporal reference indicated a change in narrative time (“An hour later…”) than at any other points in the narratives. In addition, they were quite likely to identify event boundaries at

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We perceive the world in a continuum but remember our past as discrete episodic events. Dominant models of event segmentation suggest that prediction errors or contextual changes are the driving factors that parse continuous experiences into segmented events. These models propose working memory to hold a critical role in event segmentation, yet the particular functioning of working memory that underlies segmented episodic memories remains unclear. Here, we first review the literature regarding the factors that result in the segmentation of episodic memories. Next, we discuss the role of working memory under two possible models regarding how it represents information within each event and suggest experimental predictions. Clarifying the contributions of working memory to event segmentation is important to improve our understanding of the structure of episodic memories.
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This study investigated how temporal information influences online processing of Chinese counterfactual sentences. Participants read four types of counterfactuals for answering comprehension questions. The temporal information of the event described in the conditional (antecedent) and the one in the result clause (consequent) varied. The temporal sequence was defined as chronological for a past event in the antecedent and a present event in the consequent and as reverse-chronological for a future event in the antecedent and present event in the consequent. The temporal distance was defined for the event in the antecedent as being long or short-distance from the consequent. ERP results showed a larger N400 and late positivity on the temporal indicator of the consequent in the reverse-chronological condition than the chronological condition. The effect of the temporal distance was observed on the late positivity only when the temporal sequence was reversed. The response time was delayed when the comprehension question followed a reverse-chronological vs. chronological condition and was delayed in the long-vs. short-distance condition when the temporal sequence was reversed. These findings suggest that the reverse-chronological sequence could demand a greater effort in integrating the given temporal information onto the constraint of the mental timeline during the online processing of counterfactuals. A conflict monitoring is triggered to execute the remapping process and such demand is larger when a larger time shift is demanded in the long distance condition. The temporal sequence and temporal distance could differ in their status during online comprehension of counterfactuals, with the temporal sequence serving as a more relevant cue than the temporal distance. These findings highlight the role of temporal information in counterfactual sentence comprehension.
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Citation Excerpt :
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Context is widely regarded as a major determinant of learning and memory across numerous domains, including classical and instrumental conditioning, episodic memory, economic decision-making, and motor learning. However, studies across these domains remain disconnected due to the lack of a unifying framework formalizing the concept of context and its role in learning. Here, we develop a unified vernacular allowing direct comparisons between different domains of contextual learning. This leads to a Bayesian model positing that context is unobserved and needs to be inferred. Contextual inference then controls the creation, expression, and updating of memories. This theoretical approach reveals two distinct components that underlie adaptation, proper and apparent learning, respectively referring to the creation and updating of memories versus time-varying adjustments in their expression. We review a number of extensions of the basic Bayesian model that allow it to account for increasingly complex forms of contextual learning.
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^☆: This research was supported by a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship to N.K.S., as well as grants from the James S. McDonnell Foundation and the National Science Foundation (0236651) to J.M.Z. The authors thank Pascale Michelon, Jeremy Reynolds, Khena Swallow, and Jean Vettel for helpful comments on an earlier draft of the manuscript, as well as Mitch Dornfeld, Justin Lerner, Jennifer Scott, and Melissa Vogel for help with stimulus construction and data collection.

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Temporal changes as event boundaries: Processing and memory consequences of narrative time shifts☆

Abstract

Section snippets

Experiment 1

Experiment 2

Experiment 3

Experiment 4

General discussion

Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior

Journal of Memory and Language

Journal of Memory and Language

Cognition

Journal of Memory and Language

The accessibility of pronominal antecedents as a function of episode shifts in narrative text

Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology

Using language

PsyScope: An interactive graph8ic system for designing and controlling experiments in the psychology laboratory using Macintosh computers

Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, and Computers

Long-term working memory as an alternative to capacity models of working memory in everyday skilled performance

Long-term working memory

Psychological Review

Language comprehension as structure building

Mental models: Toward a cognitive science of language, inference, and consciousness

The role of knowledge in discourse comprehension: A construction-integration model

Psychological Review

The progressive

Natural Language Semantics

Indexing space and time in film understanding

Applied Cognitive Psychology

Inference during reading

Psychological Review

Temporal ontology and temporal reference

Computational Linguistics

Attribution and the unit of perception of ongoing behavior

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

Foundations of attribution: The perception of ongoing behavior