Slices of the past: how events are temporally compressed in episodic memory

Abstract

Remembering everyday events typically takes less time than the actual duration of the retrieved episodes, a phenomenon that has been referred to as the temporal compression of events in episodic memory. Here, we review recent studies that have shed light on how this compression mechanism operates. The evidence suggests that the continuous flow of experience is not represented as such in episodic memory. Instead, the unfolding of events is recalled as a succession of moments or slices of past experience that includes temporal discontinuities-portions of past experience are omitted when remembering. Consequently, the rate of event compression is not constant but depends on the density of recalled segments of past experience.

Representational dynamics of memories for real-life events

“…A first contribution of the present study is to show that this posterior network is more active when recalling the dynamic unfolding of events compared to mentally representing static scenes. Remembering the unfolding of events involves the retrieval of moments or slices of prior experience (each moment itself consisting of a bounded set of various event features) that need to be sequenced and integrated into a stable and coherent representation (Conway, 2009; D’Argembeau et al, 2021). The posterior medial episodic network is considered to play a central role in the elaboration and use of event models (i.e., models that specify the spatial, temporal, and causal relationships between entities within a particular context) (Ranganath & Ritchey, 2012; Ritchey & Cooper, 2020; Stawarczyk et al, 2021), and may thus contribute to organize and integrate the sequence of experience units that represent the unfolding of events during episodic recall.…”

Representational dynamics of memories for real-life events

“…Remembering the unfolding of events involves the retrieval of moments or slices of prior experience (each moment itself consisting of a bounded set of various event features) that need to be sequenced and integrated into a stable and coherent representation. 1 , 44 The posterior medial episodic network is considered to play a central role in the elaboration and use of event models (i.e., models that specify the spatial, temporal, and causal relationships between entities within a particular context), 40 , 41 , 42 and may thus contribute to organize and integrate the sequence of experience units that represent the unfolding of events during episodic recall.…”

The Emotion Filmmaker: Temporal Memory, Time-Emotion Integration, and Affective Style

“…Our finding aligns with this framework and emerging computational and empirical work, and raises the possibility that individuals with trait negative disposition may remember negative events as longer-lasting-or, conversely, that the trait-like propensity to dilate the duration of negative emotional experiences in memory-due to weaker temporal-context encoding and/or stronger emotion-driven distortions in temporal context-may increase susceptibility to mood disorders (Cohen & Kahana, 2022;Talmi et al, 2019). Moving forward, it will be important to uncover how the remembered duration of negative emotional events may become dilated in individuals with higher dispositional NA, including disentangling whether these effects are due to differential encoding of the temporal context surrounding negative events (Mogg et al, 1992), vs. whether positive and negative experiences may be similarly encoded but differentially 'compressed' during consolidation and/or accessible during retrieval (Bellmund et al, 2020;Cohen & Kahana, 2022;D'Argembeau et al, 2021;Talmi et al, 2019).…”