Recognition memory was investigated for individual frames extracted from temporally continuous, visually rich film segments of 5–15 min. Participants viewed a short clip from a film in either a coherent or a jumbled order, followed by a recognition test of studied frames. Foils came either from an earlier or a later part of the film (Experiment 1) or from deleted segments selected from random cuts of varying duration (0.5 to 30 s) within the film itself (Experiment 2). When the foils came from an earlier or later part of the film (Experiment 1), recognition was excellent, with the hit rate far exceeding the false-alarm rate (.78 vs. 18). In Experiment 2, recognition was far worse, with the hit rate (.76) exceeding the false-alarm rate only for foils drawn from the longest cuts (15 and 30 s) and matching the false-alarm rate for the 5 s segments. When the foils were drawn from the briefest cuts (0.5 and 1.0 s), the false-alarm rate exceeded the hit rate. Unexpectedly, jumbling had no effect on recognition in either experiment. These results are consistent with the view that memory for complex visually temporal events is excellent, with the integrity unperturbed by disruption of the global structure of the visual stream. Disruption of memory was observed only when foils were drawn from embedded segments of duration less than 5 s, an outcome consistent with the view that memory at these shortest durations are consolidated with expectations drawn from the previous stream.
AtkinsonR. C., & JuolaJ. F. (1974). Search and decision processes in recognition memory. In KrantzD. H., AtkinsonR. C., LuceR. D., & SuppesP. (Eds.), Contemporary developments in mathematical psychology (pp. 239–289). San Francisco: W. H. Freeman.
2.
BaggettP. (1979). Structurally equivalent stories in movie and text and the effect of the medium on recall. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 18, 333–356.
3.
BowerG. H., ClarkM. C., LesgoldA. M., & WinzenzD. (1969). Hierarchical retrieval schemes in recall of categorized word lists. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 8, 323–343.
4.
BradyT. F., KonkleT., AlvarezG. A., & OlivaA. (2008). Visual long-term memory has a massive storage capacity for object details. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 105(38), 14325–14329.
5.
ChunM. M. (2003). Scene perception and memory (pp. 79–108). San Diego, CA, USA: Academic Press.
6.
CohnN., & WittenbergE. (2015). Action starring narratives and events: Structure and inference in visual narrative comprehension. Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 27, 812–828.
7.
DonaldsonW. (1996). The role of decision processes in remembering and knowing. Memory & Cognition, 24, 523–533.
8.
FreydJ. J., & FinkeR. A. (1984). Representational momentum. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 10(1), 126–132.
9.
FreydJ. J., & JohnsonJ. Q. (1987). Probing the time course of representational momentum. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 13(2), 259–268.
10.
GernsbacherM. A., VarnerK. R., & FaustM. E. (1990). Investigating differences in general comprehension skill. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 16, 430–445.
11.
GillundG., & ShiffrinR. M. (1984). A retrieval model for both recognition and recall. Psychological Review, 91(1), 1–67.
12.
GreeneM. R., & OlivaA. (2009). The briefest of glances: The time course of natural scene understanding. Psychological Science, 20(4), 464–472.
13.
HansonC., & HirstW. (1989). On the representation of events: A study of orientation, recall, and recognition. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 118, 136–147.
14.
HassonU., YangE., VallinesI., HeegerD. J., & RubinN. (2008). A hierarchy of temporal receptive windows in human cortex. Journal of Neuroscience, 28, 2539–2550.
15.
HintzmanD. L. (1988). Judgments of frequency and recognition memory in a multiple-trace memory model. Psychological Review, 95(4), 528–551.
HomaD., & VieraC. (1988). Long-term memory for pictures under conditions of thematically related foils. Memory & Cognition, 16(5), 411–421.
18.
KonkleT., BradyT. F., AlvarezG. A., & OlivaA. (2010). Scene memory is more detailed than you think: The role of categories in visual long-term memory. Psychological Science, 21(11), 1551–1556.
19.
KurbyC. A., & ZacksJ. M. (2008). Segmentation in the perception and memory of events. Trends in cognitive sciences, 12(2), 72–79.
20.
KurbyC. A., & ZacksJ. M. (2011). Age differences in the perception of hierarchical structure in events. Memory & Cognition, 39, 75–91.
21.
LassiterG. D., StoneJ. L., & RogersS. L. (1988). Memorial consequences of variation in behavior perception. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 24, 222–239.
22.
MandlerJ. M., & JohnsonN. S. (1977). Remembrance of things parsed: Story structure and recall. Cognitive psychology, 9(1), 111–151.
23.
MatthewsW. J., BenjaminC., & OsborneC. (2007). Memory for moving and static images. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 14(5), 989–993.
24.
MickesL., WaisP. E., & WixtedJ. T. (2009). Recollection is a continuous process: Implications for dual-process theories of recognition memory. Psychological Science, 20, 509–515.
25.
NausM. J., GlucksbergS., & OrnsteinP. A. (1972). Taxonomic word categories and memory search. Cognitive Psychology, 3, 643–654.
26.
NelsonT. O., MetzlerJ., & ReedD. A. (1974). Conditioned adaptation to prismatic displacement: Training trials and decay. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 102, 194–198.
27.
NewtsonD., & EngquistG. (1976). The perceptual organization of ongoing behavior. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 12(5), 436–450.
28.
NewtsonD., EngquistG. A., & BoisJ. (1977). The objective basis of behavior units. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 35(12), 847–862.
29.
NobelP. A., & ShiffrinR. M. (2001). Retrieval processes in recognition and cued recall. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 27(2), 384–413.
30.
OmohundroJ., & HomaD. (1981). Search for abstracted information. American Journal of Psychology, 94, 267–290.
31.
PenfieldW. (1958). Some mechanisms of consciousness discovered during electrical stimulation of the brain. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 44, 51–66.
32.
RatcliffR. (1978). A theory of memory retrieval. Psychological Review, 85(2), 59–108.
33.
ScorseseM. (2013). Persistence of vision: Reading the language of cinema. Washington, DC: Jefferson Lecture at the National Endowment for the Humanities.
34.
SharpR. M., & DonaldsonD. I. (2007). Electrophysiological correlates of event segmentation: How does the human mind process ongoing activity? Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Neuroscience Society, New York, Cognitive Neuroscience Society, p. 235.
35.
ShepardR. N. (1967). Recognition memory for words, sentences, and pictures. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 6(1), 156–163.
36.
SimonsD. J., & LevinD. T. (1997). Change blindness. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 1(7), 261–267.
ThorndykeP. W. (1977). Cognitive structures in comprehension and memory of narrative discourse. Cognitive Psychology, 9(1), 77–110.
39.
YonelinasA. P. (1999). The contribution of recollection and familiarity to recognition and source-memory judgments: A formal dual-process model and an analysis of receiver operating characterstics. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 25, 1415–1434.
40.
ZacksJ. M., SpeerN. K., SwallowK. M., BraverT. S., & ReynoldsJ. R. (2007). Event perception: A mind-brain perspective. Psychological Bulletin, 133(2), 273–293.
41.
ZacksJ. M., SpeerN. K., SwallowK. M., & MaleyC. J. (2010). The brain's cutting-room floor: Segmentation of narrative cinema. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 4(168), 1–15.
42.
ZacksJ. M., SpeerN. K., VettelJ. M., & JacobyL. L. (2006). Event understanding and memory in healthy aging and dementia of the Alzheimer type. Psychology and Aging, 21, 466–482.
43.
ZacksJ. M., TverskyB., & IyerG. (2001). Perceiving, remembering, and communicating structure in events. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 130(1), 29–58.
44.
ZwaanR. A., & RadvanskyG. A. (1998). Situation models in language comprehension and memory. Psychological Bulletin, 123, 162–185.
