Understanding Event Boundaries Can Enhance Memory Retention

The Importance of Everyday Moments

Life is made up of countless small moments—brewing coffee, letting the dog outside, logging onto a laptop, and then bringing the dog in.

These ordinary actions weave together the rich tapestry of our daily experiences.

To understand how we interpret and remember these everyday occurrences, Jeff Zacks, chair of the Department of Psychological & Brain Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, highlights the importance of recognizing how we perceive the beginnings and endings of events.

Research Insights and Findings

In a pair of recent studies, Zacks and his team, which includes researchers from the McKelvey School of Engineering, have taken a deep dive into how our brains process these routine moments.

One standout project involved training computer models to analyze over 25 hours of footage of people engaging in simple tasks like cooking or tidying up.

Surprisingly, these models displayed their best accuracy when faced with uncertainty.

When confronted with unfamiliar scenes, they would pause to reassess the context, leading to deeper understanding.

The findings, published in PNAS Nexus, challenge previous notions about how our minds handle surprises.

Earlier, Zacks had theorized that we are wired to pay attention to minor surprises in our daily lives and reassess scenes when we encounter unexpected elements, a process known as “prediction error.” However, the new research indicates that the computer models prioritize uncertainty rather than just prediction errors, suggesting a more nuanced approach to how we perceive our world.

Researcher Tan Nguyen notes that surprises do still matter, but this doesn’t mean we need to toss out the prediction error concept altogether.

The brain might rely on a combination of mechanisms to navigate these everyday interactions.

Each model offers fresh insights into our cognitive processes, enriching our understanding.

Future Directions and Applications

The exploration doesn’t stop there.

Maverick Smith, a postdoctoral researcher in the Dynamic Cognition Lab, is examining how event comprehension relates to memory.

Smith, along with Heather Bailey, a former colleague now at Kansas State University, has co-authored a review in Nature Reviews Psychology that highlights the connection between effective long-term memory and our ability to grasp where events start and stop.

Smith observes that people often vary in how well they identify these boundaries, which can significantly impact their memory later on.

His goal is to develop interventions that help people better segment events, potentially enhancing their memory along the way.

Using videos of daily activities—like shopping or setting up electronics—participants are tasked with signaling when they perceive the start or finish of an event, and their memory is subsequently tested through a series of written questions.

There’s a concerning trend emerging: older adults tend to struggle with processing events, which can contribute to age-related memory loss.

Smith’s research aims to uncover methods that might assist older people in recalling events from their past more effectively.

Zacks, Nguyen, Smith, and their colleagues are not shying away from ambitious plans to explore how our brains handle events.

Zacks’ team is currently leveraging fMRI technology to investigate the neural responses of 45 participants as they react to everyday activity videos in real time.

This work aims to shed light on the neural dynamics connected to these cognitive functions.

Eye movement tracking is another area of research.

Zacks explains that when people observe ordinary activities, they often focus on the movement of the task-doer’s hands.

In tandem, Smith’s video assessments seek to determine whether clarifying event boundaries can enhance memory in participants, including older adults and those diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.

His ultimate aim is to understand how these observations are encoded and preserved in long-term memory.

Some people naturally excel at breaking down events into coherent segments.

The research team is now probing whether enhancing this skill could lead to improved memory retention.

The quest to unlock the mysteries of how we comprehend and remember our everyday lives remains a vibrant area of investigation, with the promise of richer insights into human cognition.

Study Details:

• Title: Modeling human activity comprehension at human scale: Prediction, segmentation, and categorization
• Authors: Tan T Nguyen, Jeff Zacks, Matt Bezdek, Aaron Bobick, Todd Braver, Samuel Gershman
• Journal: PNAS Nexus
• Publication Date: 2024
• DOI: 10.1093/pnasnexus/pgae459
• Link: Read the article