Remembering Cinematic Sequences: Boundaries Disrupt Memory in Fast-Paced Visual Events

We engage with at least one type of visual media on a daily basis. Among those, there is a growing interest in the perception of cinematic events among cognitive psychologists. The current study investigated how event boundaries and pace affect recognition memory for movie scenes. We presented participants with brief clips composed out of six shots which either included a boundary or not and whether the average shot length was long or short. The results indicated that slower paced scenes were remembered better than faster paced scenes. More interestingly, there was a significant interaction between event boundary and pace. For fast-paced scenes, lower accuracy as well as longer reaction times were observed for scenes that involved an event boundary compared to those without an event boundary. Analysis of the serial position of the individual shots further indicated that people remember information in the new scene compared to the old scene only for fast-paced scenes. Event segmentation theory states that we form an active model of an event in working memory, which is updated when there is a significant change that violates predictions. Our experiment adds to event segmentation theory suggesting that the role of event boundaries is conditional on the exposure duration. When information is consolidated with enough exposure, the experience of an event boundary does not hinder memory. The current study provides new evidence showing that in complex visual scenes, memory operates economically to rely on the current model when the resources are limited.