Aging and the segmentation of narrative film

Abstract

The perception of event structure in continuous activity is important for everyday comprehension. Although the segmentation of experience into events is a normal concomitant of perceptual processing, previous research has shown age differences in the ability to perceive structure in naturalistic activity, such as a movie of someone washing a car. However, past research has also shown that older adults have a preserved ability to comprehend events in narrative text, which suggests that narrative may improve the event processing of older adults. This study tested whether there are age differences in event segmentation at the intersection of continuous activity and narrative: narrative film. Younger and older adults watched and segmented a narrative film, The Red Balloon, into coarse and fine events. Changes in situational features, such as changes in characters, goals, and objects predicted segmentation. Analyses revealed little age-difference in segmentation behavior. This suggests the possibility that narrative structure supports event understanding for older adults.

Reduced distinctiveness of event boundaries in older adults with poor memory performance.

“…We acknowledge several limitations of the present study that warrant discussion. While previous work suggests that both older and younger adults identify boundaries using the same criteria (Kurby et al, 2014), and our results did not change when excluding scenes that did not end with unambiguous scene changes, we cannot rule out the possibility that age differences may be due to differences in where individuals identify boundaries. Future work might benefit from identifying boundary locations using implicit measures, such as eye tracking (pupil size linked to boundaries; Clewett et al, 2020) or neuroimaging (data-driven models can be used to identify boundaries in both electroencephalography; Silva et al, 2019, and functional magnetic resonance imaging; Baldassano et al, 2017;Geerligs et al, 2021).…”

“…However, several studies suggest that event segmentation is preserved with age (Kurby et al, 2014; Magliano et al, 2012). For instance, Kurby and Zacks (2018) showed reduced agreement in the explicit identification of event boundaries in older adults but preserved neural activation in regions associated with event segmentation with age.…”

Age differences in the perception of goal structure in everyday activity.

“…We computed two logistic mixed effect models (Jaeger, 2008) to assess age differences in the relation between goal structure and segmentation behavior, one for fine segmentation and one for coarse segmentation, using the R package lmerTest (Kuznetsova, Brockhoff, & Christensen, 2017; see Kurby & Zacks, 2012 and Kurby, Asiala, & Mills, 2014 for similar uses of logistic mixed effect models in the analysis of segmentation behavior.) We created four goal structure predictors, one for each type of action unit, A1, crux, A2, and summary unit.…”

“…In the present study, participants viewed naturalistic activity, whereas in that work participants read literary narratives. Older adults may use narrative structure to support their event processing (Kurby et al, 2014; Magliano et al, 2012). Narratives structure event information to guide processing and mental model construction (Zwaan & Radvansky, 1998), and narratives allow for better knowledge integration (Graesser, Golding, & Long, 1991; Haberlandt, Berian, & Sandson, 1980; Hannon & Daneman, 2009; Mandler, 1987).…”

Priming of movie content is modulated by event boundaries.

“…These moments are subjectively perceived as event boundaries. When segmenting and building event models, people tend to update information about the characters in the scene, their goals, spatiotemporal location, causality, objects of contact, and, potentially, emotionality (Gernsbacher et al, 1998; Kurby et al, 2014; Zacks, 2020; Zwaan et al, 1995; Zwaan & Radvansky, 1998). This process of event segmentation makes contact with a number of cognitive systems, including attentional control (Eisenberg & Zacks, 2016; Huff et al, 2012; Reimer et al, 2015), control of eye movements during reading (Swets & Kurby, 2016), and comprehension (Delogu et al, 2018; Newberry & Bailey, 2019; Pettijohn & Radvansky, 2016a); it also plays a key role in the episodic encoding of events into memory (DuBrow & Davachi, 2013; Ezzyat & Davachi, 2011; Heusser et al, 2018; Radvansky, 2012; Sargent et al, 2013; Zacks et al, 2006).…”