Event endings in memory and language

Miguel Santin,Angeliek Van Hout,Monique Flecken

doi:10.1080/23273798.2020.1868542

Miguel Santin, Angeliek Van Hout + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1080/23273798.2020.1868542

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Abstract

ABSTRACT Memory is fundamental for comprehending and segmenting the flow of activity around us into units called “events”. Here, we investigate the effect of the movement dynamics of actions (ceased, ongoing) and the inner structure of events (with or without object-state change) on people's event memory. Furthermore, we investigate how describing events, and the meaning and form of verb predicates used (denoting a culmination moment, or not, in single verbs or verb-satellite constructions), affects event memory. Before taking a surprise recognition task, Spanish and Mandarin speakers (who lexicalise culmination in different verb predicate forms) watched short videos of events, either in a non-verbal (probe-recognition) or a verbal experiment (event description). Results show that culminated events (i.e. ceased change-of-state events) were remembered best across experiments. Language use showed to enhance memory overall. Further, the form of the verb predicates used for denoting culmination had a moderate effect on memory.

Highlights

The ability to segment the continuous flow of activity around us into discrete units, called “events”, is fundamental to human perception and memory
Experiment 1 In Experiment 1 we investigated the role of the movement dynamics of actions and object-state change in event memory
This is different from an event segmentation study (Zacks, Kumar, et al, 2009), in which it was found that changes in the movement dynamics of actions performed by an agent correlates with the detection of event boundaries

Summary

Introduction

The ability to segment the continuous flow of activity around us into discrete units, called “events”, is fundamental to human perception and memory. The specific way in which an event ends is part of this representation. A speaker has to gather information on the event’s participants (people and objects), their roles in the event, and the event’s spatial and temporal structure, thereby constructing an event representation (called “the message” in language production) similar to the working models constructed in perception (Gerwien & von Stutterheim, 2018; Levelt, 1989). There is no consensus on how describing events, and the specific variation in the language used in these descriptions (both in terms of meaning and form), may or may not influence how events and their endings are represented in memory. The findings are relevant for event cognition theories, as well as for our understanding of the languagecognition interface

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