Temporal memory about when in the past something happened is suggested to be reconstructed rather than recalled. Participants usually show a degree of mismatch between remembered and actual temporal position of an event. However, recent studies showed markedly different results, including both relatively low temporal precision, for visual objects presented earlier in a series, and relatively high temporal precision, for movie scenes shown at the start of a movie. One explanation could be the use of different stimulus materials, for which participants would employ different cognitive encoding or mnemonic strategies. However, a more parsimonious explanation would be that temporal judgments arise from a common mechanism, regardless of stimulus material or context. In the current manuscript, we reanalysed the results of two previously published experiments and investigated the effect of boundary segmentation and semantic relatedness during encoding in two new experiments. We found that participants showed more temporal uncertainty when the encoded visual objects and contexts were unrelated. Further, we found that increasing the semantic associations during encoding diminished temporal uncertainty but increased temporal underestimation bias, which we interpret as an indication of temporal compression. A simple computational model in which temporal judgment is based on a Gaussian process defined by temporal uncertainty (dispersion) and temporal bias (location) replicated the empirical data of all four experiments, suggesting that patterns of temporal errors observed in different experiments arise from a common mechanism. The model further underscores that semantic relatedness between items decreases temporal uncertainty but enhances temporal compression. These findings have important ramifications for how we memorize the temporal structure of events.
Temporally structured sequences of experiences, such as narratives or life events, are segmented in memory into discrete situational models. In segmentation, contextual shifts are processed as situational boundaries that temporally cluster items according to the perceived contexts. As such, segmentation enhances associative binding of items within a situational model. One side effect of enhanced associative processing is increased risk of false recollections for not-presented, semantically related items. If so, do boundaries facilitate false recollections, or does segmentation protect against them? In two experiments, we introduced situational shifts in word sequences in the form of semantic and perceptual boundaries, with semantic relatedness between words or the frame color around a word changing on a regular basis. After encoding, we tested participants’ associative memory performance and false recollection rates. In Experiment 1, color boundaries occurred synchronously or asynchronously to semantic boundaries. We found better associative recognition, but also more false recollections, for synchronous than asynchronous boundaries. In Experiment 2, color boundaries occurred synchronous to semantic boundaries or were absent entirely. We found that false recollection rates elicited by semantic boundaries increased when color boundaries were absent. We also tested associative memory performance using a non-semantic, temporal memory task. We found better temporal memory performance for semantic boundaries, as well as a negative correlation between increased false recollection rates and better temporal memory performance for semantic lists, but not for random lists. We discuss implications for false memory theories and segmentation of narrative materials in false memory research.
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