The effects of domain knowledge and event structure on event processing.

Research suggests that domain knowledge facilitates memory for domain-specific information through two mechanisms: differentiation, which involves the ability to identify meaningful, fine-grained details within a sequence, and unitization, which involves binding individual components from a sequence into functional wholes. This study investigated the extent to which individuals engaged in differentiation and unitization when parsing continuous events into discrete, meaningful units (i.e., event segmentation) and recalling them. Participants watched and segmented basketball videos. They then rewatched the videos and provided descriptions afterward. Videos were coded for the presence of higher order goals (A2 actions) and the individual sub-actions that comprised them (A1 actions). Results suggested that event segmentation behavior for participants with less knowledge was more aligned with changes in basic actions (A1 actions) than for participants with greater knowledge. When describing events, participants with greater knowledge were more likely than participants with less knowledge to use statements that reflected unitization.

Knowledge and the reliability of constructive memory.

Memory is constructive, but that does not mean it is unreliable. When people remember the events of their lives they depend on knowledge, some of which is in the form of scripts or schemata. Schematic information encodes typical patterns in events, and for this reason schemata often contribute veridical features to memory reconstruction. This process can be thought of in Bayesian terms, as incorporating prior probabilities based on recurring patterns in experience. It also can be thought of in terms of statistical regression, such that information from knowledge is combined with information from episodic traces to reconstruct a best estimate of what happened.

Stability and change in the organisation of collective memory representations.

In this study, we investigated the impact of a highly consequential public event, the July 15 Coup Attempt, on the structure and organisation of events in Turkish collective memory. To do this, we followed up on our earlier work (Mutlutürk, Tekcan, & Boduroglu, 2021) that used the multidimensional scaling approach to identify critical dimensions in public event representational space. Participants rated the similarity of 15 key public events in a pairwise fashion, across three waves of data collection. They were also asked to report for which political party they had voted in the most recent election. We replicated our earlier results that public events were distinguished based on their political and nonpolitical characteristics; political events were clustered based on their specific attributes. Despite substantial stability in the organisation of collective memories across three time points, the post-coup representational space among voters of the ruling party changed, eliminating clusters within the political dimension and resulting in the ruling party achieving a central and anchor status. These findings suggest that, transformative events may have the potential to impact the structure and organisation of collective memory representations and sociopolitical identity may have to do with the stability of collective memories.

How suspense and surprise enhance subsequent memory: the case of the 2016 United States Presidential Election.

We examined whether the retroactive enhancement effect - i.e., improved memory accuracy for event details occurring before a surprising moment - would be present in participants' memory for details in their private lives following a surprising and suspenseful public event. To equate event type across participants, we selected when they first learned the outcome of the 2016 US Presidential Election. Participants self-divided into those who viewed the outcome as positive, negative, or neutral, while we experimentally divided them into those whose memory was assessed 6 or 12 months post-election. We assessed their accuracy for details surrounding the election and their phenomenological experience of learning the outcome, including emotional tension, our operationalisation of suspense. We found participants' memory characteristics were strongly related to their level of tension and shock, irrespective of valence. We also observed uniformly high accuracy regarding details about the weather participants experienced in their ZIP codes on election day. While these results intimated about the presence of retroactive enhancement, Experiment 2 examined the effect more directly by comparing participants' memory for the 2016 Election with two other politically-relevant events that provoked less tense reactions. The results revealed retroactive enhancement is dependent upon experiencing a surprising moment amidst a suspenseful event.

Competing national memories of World War II.

We assessed the knowledge of 1,338 people from 11 countries (8 former Allied and 3 former Axis) about World War II. When asked what percentage their country contributed to the war effort, across Allied countries, estimates totaled 309%, and Axis nations' estimates came to 140%. People in 4 nations claimed more than 50% responsibility for their country (Germany, Russia, United Kingdom, and United States). The overclaiming of responsibility reflected in these percentages was moderated when subjects were asked to consider the contributions of other countries; however, Russians continued to claim great responsibility, the only country that remained well over 50% in its claim of responsibility for the Allied victory. If deaths in the war are considered a proxy of a nation's contributions, the Soviet Union did carry much of the burden. This study points to sharp differences in national memory even across nations who fought on the same side in the war. Differing national perspectives shape diverse memories of the same complex event.

Reminders activate the prefrontal-medial temporal cortex and attenuate forgetting of event memory.

Replicas of an aspect of an experienced event can serve as effective reminders, yet little is known about the neural basis of such reminding effects. Here we examined the neural activity underlying the memory-enhancing effect of reminders 1 week after encoding of naturalistic film clip events. We used fMRI to determine differences in network activity associated with recently reactivated memories relative to comparably aged, non-reactivated memories. Reminders were effective in facilitating overall retrieval of memory for film clips, in an all-or-none fashion. Prefrontal cortex and hippocampus were activated during both reminders and retrieval. Peak activation in ventro-lateral prefrontal cortex (vPFC) preceded peak activation in the right hippocampus during the reminders. For film clips that were successfully retrieved after 7 days, pre-retrieval reminders did not enhance the quality of the retrieved memory or the number of details retrieved, nor did they more strongly engage regions of the recollection network than did successful retrieval of a non-reminded film clip. These results suggest that reminders prior to retrieval are an effective means of boosting retrieval of otherwise inaccessible episodic events, and that the inability to recall certain events after a delay of a week largely reflects a retrieval deficit, rather than a storage deficit for this information. The results extend other evidence that vPFC drives activation of the hippocampus to facilitate memory retrieval and scene construction, and show that this facilitation also occurs when reminder cues precede successful retrieval attempts. The time course of vPFC-hippocampal activity during the reminder suggests that reminders may first engage schematic information meditated by vPFC followed by a recollection process mediated by the hippocampus.

The flexibility of early memories: Limited reevaluation of action steps in 2-year-old infants.

This study investigated the flexibility of 2-year-old infants' retrieval and reenactment processes. In a delayed imitation paradigm, children were exposed to a constraint change (implemented by the distance of a target object) affecting the relevance of using a tool to obtain a goal (reach the object). In Experiment 1, during demonstration in the first session the tool was either relevant or irrelevant for reaching the goal, and 1 week later it either lost or gained its relevance, respectively. We found that when the tool became unnecessary (relevant to irrelevant change), children used it somewhat less than before and used it less compared with when the tool's relevance remained the same (relevant to relevant, no change). When the tool became necessary after a constraint change (irrelevant to relevant change), children used the tool more than before, but not as much as in the Relevant-Relevant control condition. In Experiment 2, the timing of the constraint change (immediate or delayed) was varied in a modified version of the Irrelevant-Relevant condition, where practice before the constraint change was omitted. Children were not significantly more flexible in the immediate condition than in the delayed condition, and comparisons with Experiment 1 showed that performance did not change if we omitted the practice before the change. These results indicate that although 2-year-olds show considerable mnemonic performance, they face difficulties in adapting to constraint changes. We propose that this inflexibility may stem from infants' inability to revise their evaluations formed in previous events due to their immature episodic memory capacities.

Remembering facts versus feelings in the wake of political events.

Amid rising political polarisation, inaccurate memory for facts and exaggerated memories of grievances can drive individuals and groups further apart. We assessed whether people with more accurate memories of the facts concerning political events were less susceptible to bias when remembering how events made them feel. Study 1 assessed participants' memories concerning the 2016 U.S. presidential election (N = 571), and included 33 individuals with Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory (HSAM). Study 2 assessed participants' memories concerning the 2018 referendum on abortion in Ireland (N = 733). Participants rated how happy, angry, and scared they felt days after these events. Six months later, they recalled their feelings and factual information. In both studies, participants overestimated how angry they had felt but underestimated happiness and fear. Adjusting for importance, no association was found between the accuracy of memory for facts and feelings. Accuracy in remembering facts was predicted by media exposure. Accuracy in remembering feelings was predicted by consistency over time in feelings and appraisals about past events. HSAM participants in Study 1 remembered election-related facts better than others, but not their feelings. Thus, having a good grasp of the facts did not protect against bias in remembering feelings about political events.

Negative emotion increases false memory for person/action conjunctions.

Two experiments demonstrate that eyewitnesses often falsely recognise an actor performing an action that had actually been performed by someone else, even if the action involves negative emotions and the actor in question had only appeared in emotionally neutral contexts. Participants viewed videos, each involving an actor performing a neutral (e.g. making oatmeal) or negatively valenced (e.g. killing a roach) action, and were asked to remember the events (Experiment 1) or to rate them for valence and arousal (Experiment 2). In both experiments, participants remembered negative actions better than neutral actions. Participants were also especially likely, however, to falsely recognise a different person performing a negative action. Experiment 2 revealed that this effect was modulated by the prior emotional contexts in which an actor had appeared. Participants were still just as likely, however, to falsely recognise an actor who had only appeared in neutral contexts now performing a negative action as they were to falsely recognise this actor performing a different neutral action. These results suggest that even individuals seen only in benign contexts can be falsely remembered as having participated in emotionally charged events (e.g. crimes).

The effects of observing different gestures during storytelling on the recall of path and event information in 5-year-olds and adults.

This study examined (a) how observing different types of gestures while listening to a story affected the recall of path and event information in 5-year-old children (n = 71) and adults (n = 55) and (b) whether the effects of gesture type on children's recall of information were related to individual differences such as working memory, language abilities, spontaneous gesture use, and gesture production during the recall task. Participants were asked four questions to measure their spontaneous gesture frequency. They then listened to a story that included different path and event information. Depending on the assigned condition, participants listened to the story with the narrator producing iconic gestures (gestures having semantic meaning), beat gestures (rhythmic hand movements), or no gesture. We then asked participants to relate what happened in the story and administered a recognition task about the story. Children were given standardized tests to assess their language and working memory skills. Children and adults best recalled the story after observing iconic gestures as compared with children and adults presented with beat gestures or no gestures. Children who were exposed to iconic gestures during encoding better recalled event information than children in the other conditions. Children's language abilities, but not working memory, were related to their recall performance. More important, children with better expressive language abilities benefitted more from seeing iconic gestures. These results suggest that observing iconic gestures at encoding facilitates recall and that children's language skills could play a role in encoding and using specific information provided by gestures.

Remembering the big game: social identity and memory for media events.

Two studies examined how memories are formed around championship sporting events, which we classify as media events. The first study employed a test-retest methodology to assess how fans of a sport recall a championship sporting event. The second study examined how fans of specific sports teams recalled two championship sporting events in which their team either won or lost. Of particular interest was the emergence of a collective memory within fan communities. We assessed memory for the event itself (event memory), with an emphasis on the emergence of a collective memory, and memory for the context in which one experienced the event (personal circumstance memory). In contrast to fans of a sport more generally, fans of a particular team recalled events involving their team with detail, converged on collective memories, and provided personal circumstance memories that met the criteria for flashbulb memories. We discuss these results in the context of social identities and the elements involved in narratives of media events. Different types of fandom, our measure of social identity, uniquely influenced the collective memories formed for essential and ancillary elements of narratives surrounding championship sporting events.

Highly emotional vicarious memories.

Vicarious memories are memories that people have in reference to events that they have not directly experienced, rather heard second-hand. Little research has investigated vicarious memory; when it has, it has predominantly focused on vicarious trauma. The purpose of this study was to compare vicarious memories with personal memories. University students (N = 142) completed an in-person interview in which they recalled four memories: a highly positive personal memory, a highly negative personal memory, a highly positive vicarious memory and a highly negative vicarious memory. Personal and vicarious memory reports were compared and contrasted in terms of memory qualities, memory functions and event centrality. The results indicate that vicarious and personal memory reports share many phenomenological and functional properties. Although to a lesser degree than personal memories, vicarious memories do influence decision-making and problem-solving. Current models of episodic memory only include events that individuals have directly experienced. The current study adds to a growing body of literature which suggests that current models of episodic memory are too restrictive and should expand to include vicarious memory reports.

The Primacy of Spatial Context in the Neural Representation of Events.

Some theories of episodic memory hypothesize that spatial context plays a fundamental role in episodic memory, acting as a scaffold on which episodes are constructed. A prediction based on this hypothesis is that spatial context should play a primary role in the neural representation of an event. To test this hypothesis in humans, male and female participants imagined events, composed of familiar locations, people, and objects, during an fMRI scan. We used multivoxel pattern analysis to determine the neural areas in which events could be discriminated based on each feature. We found that events could be discriminated according to their location in areas throughout the autobiographical memory network, including the parahippocampal cortex and posterior hippocampus, retrosplenial cortex, posterior cingulate cortex, precuneus, and medial prefrontal cortex. Events were also discriminable based on person and object features, but in fewer regions. Comparing classifier performance in regions involved in memory for scenes and events demonstrated that the location of an event was more accurately classified than the person or object involved. These results support theories that suggest that spatial context is a prominent defining feature of episodic memory.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Remembered and imagined events are complex, consisting of many elements, including people, objects, and locations. In this study, we sought to determine how these types of elements differentially contribute to how the brain represents an event. Participants imagined events consisting of familiar locations, people, and objects (e.g., kitchen, mom, umbrella) while their brain activity was recorded with fMRI. We found that the neural patterns of activity in brain regions associated with spatial and episodic memory could distinguish events based on their location, and to some extent, based on the people and objects involved. These results suggest that the spatial context of an event plays an important role in how an event is represented in the brain.

Evidence that an episodic mode of thinking facilitates encoding of perceptually rich memories for naturalistic events relative to a gist-based mode of thinking.

Several studies have demonstrated that an episodic specificity induction (ESI) can influence cognitive abilities that involve episodic processes at retrieval. To better understand the downstream implications of an "episodic mode of thinking," we investigate whether an ESI influences encoding of new events. In a between-subjects design, participants were given an ESI or gist (control) induction. In an ostensibly unrelated task, participants then were shown film clips of naturalistic events. After a filled delay, participants were given a surprise memory test, which required narrative recollection of the film clips. Participants who received the ESI generated narratives that contained more perceptual details specifically. Relative to gist thinking, an episodic mode of thinking appears to facilitate encoding of perceptually rich memories for naturalistic events.

Kindergarten children's event memory: the role of action prediction in remembering.

In two studies, kindergarteners participated in a series of staged events immediately preceded by pre-event interactions that were designed to identify factors relevant to improving recall. The events were based on preschool science-related activities and the experimental pre-event involved predicting actions to occur during a target event, manipulating types of cues available to support these predictive inferences. Action prediction did improve free recall, and effects may have influenced attentional processes evoked by actions generated and enacted. Although children effectively used outcome cues to predict actions, a one-to-one relation between pre-event action prediction patterns and recall did not occur. In combination with other findings, this result may suggest that increased attention during the target event may have supported the pre-event effect rather than integration of information between the pre-event and target event. Early childhood teachers engaging children in science activities should provide explicit cues to enhance usefulness of preparatory activities for recall.

Who was that masked man? Conjoint representations of intrinsic motions with actor appearance.

Motion plays an important role in recognising animate creatures. This research supports a distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic motions in their relationship to identifying information about the characters performing the motions. Participants viewed events involving costumed human characters. Intrinsic motions involved relative movements of a character's body parts, whereas extrinsic motions involved movements with respect to external landmarks. Participants were later tested for recognition of the motions and who had performed them. The critical test items involved familiar characters performing motions that had previously been performed by other characters. Participants falsely recognised extrinsic conjunction items, in which characters followed the paths of other characters, more often than intrinsic conjunction items, in which characters moved in the manner of other characters. In contrast, participants falsely recognised new extrinsic motions less often than new intrinsic motions, suggesting that they remembered extrinsic motions but had difficulty remembering who had performed them. Modelling of receiver operating characteristics indicated that participants discriminated old items from intrinsic conjunction items via familiarity, consistent with conjoint representations of intrinsic motion and identity information. In contrast, participants used recollection to distinguish old items from extrinsic conjunction items, consistent with separate but associated representations of extrinsic motion and identity information.

Distinctiveness enhances long-term event memory in non-human primates, irrespective of reinforcement.

Non-human primates are capable of recalling events that occurred as long as 3 years ago, and are able to distinguish between similar events; akin to human memory. In humans, distinctiveness enhances memory for events, however, it is unknown whether the same occurs in non-human primates. As such, we tested three great ape species on their ability to remember an event that varied in distinctiveness. Across three experiments, apes witnessed a baiting event in which one of three identical containers was baited with food. After a delay of 2 weeks, we tested their memory for the location of the baited container. Apes failed to recall the baited container when the event was undistinctive (Experiment 1), but were successful when it was distinctive (Experiment 2), although performance was equally good in a less-distinctive condition. A third experiment (Experiment 3) confirmed that distinctiveness, independent of reinforcement, was a consistent predictor of performance. These findings suggest that distinctiveness may enhance memory for events in non-human primates in the same way as in humans, and provides further evidence of basic similarities between the ways apes and humans remember past events.

Why do we remember? The communicative function of episodic memory.

Episodic memory has been analyzed in a number of different ways in both philosophy and psychology, and most controversy has centered on its self-referential, 'autonoetic' character. Here, we offer a comprehensive characterization of episodic memory in representational terms, and propose a novel functional account on this basis. We argue that episodic memory should be understood as a distinctive epistemic attitude taken towards an event simulation. On this view, episodic memory has a metarepresentational format and should not be equated with beliefs about the past. Instead, empirical findings suggest that the contents of human episodic memory are often constructed in the service of the explicit justification of such beliefs. Existing accounts of episodic memory function that have focused on explaining its constructive character through its role in 'future-oriented mental time travel' neither do justice to its capacity to ground veridical beliefs about the past nor to its representational format. We provide an account of the metarepresentational structure of episodic memory in terms of its role in communicative interaction. The generative nature of recollection allows us to represent and communicate the reasons for why we hold certain beliefs about the past. In this process, autonoesis corresponds to the capacity to determine when and how to assert epistemic authority in making claims about the past. A domain where such claims are indispensable are human social engagements. Such engagements commonly require the justification of entitlements and obligations, which is often possible only by explicit reference to specific past events.

When anticipation beats accuracy: Threat alters memory for dynamic scenes.

Threat frequently leads to the prioritization of survival-relevant processes. Much of the work examining threat-related processing advantages has focused on the detection of static threats or long-term memory for details. In the present study, we examined immediate memory for dynamic threatening situations. We presented participants with visually neutral, dynamic stimuli using a representational momentum (RM) paradigm, and manipulated threat conceptually. Although the participants in both the threatening and nonthreatening conditions produced classic RM effects, RM was stronger for scenarios involving threat (Exps. 1 and 2). Experiments 2 and 3 showed that this effect does not generalize to the nonthreatening objects within a threatening scene, and that it does not extend to arousing happy situations. Although the increased RM effect for threatening objects by definition reflects reduced accuracy, we argue that this reduced accuracy may be offset by a superior ability to predict, and thereby evade, a moving threat.

Memory for positive, negative and neutral events in younger and older adults: Does emotion influence binding in event memory?

When remembering an event, it is important to remember both the features of the event (e.g., a person and an action) and the connections among features (e.g., who performed which action). Emotion often enhances memory for stimulus features, but the relationship between emotion and the binding of features in memory is unclear. Younger and older adults attempted to remember events in which a person performed a negative, positive or neutral action. Memory for the action was enhanced by emotion, but emotion did not enhance the ability of participants to remember which person performed which action. Older adults were more likely than younger adults to make binding errors in which they incorrectly remembered a familiar actor performing a familiar action that had actually been performed by someone else, and this age-related associative deficit was found for both neutral and emotional actions. Emotion not only increased correct recognition of old events for older and younger adults but also increased false recognition of events in which a familiar actor performed a familiar action that had been performed by someone else. Thus, although emotion may enhance memory for the features of an event, it does not increase the accuracy of remembering who performed which action.