Abstract

Though everyday life is continuous, people tend to understand and remember experiences as discrete events separated by boundaries. Event segmentation theory (EST) (Zacks et al., 2007) describes these event boundaries as being driven by prediction error. People have an internal model of how an event unfolds, uses this to form predictions, and then places a boundary when a new model is necessary. Prior studies suggest that episodic memory is enhanced for information occurring near event boundaries, though less is known about these effects in interactive environments. To assess this, I designed an experimental paradigm where participants uncover changes in the underlying situation through interaction, leading to event boundaries. In Experiment 1, I report the findings of a free recall study with the word rule inference task (WRIT). The primary finding being that while event boundaries structured recall, memory for items immediately following a boundary was impaired, and contextual certainty, rather than prediction error, was coupled with improved recall. Experiment 2 was developed to delineate whether the findings of the first experiment were due to effects of rule inference or temporal uncertainty. Temporal certainty improved overall recall, but the post-boundary deficit persisted unless participants were given full certainty over the rule sequence and the bounds of the event. Extending this approach to recognition memory (Experiment 3), I assess whether the effects of certainty are differential when one does not have to guide search using events. In Experiment 4, I consider whether the post-boundary memory deficit is linked to event model binding, attentional resource shifts, or a mixture of these processes. This is assessed by using temporal distance and order judgments to examine how items are represented closer or further from each other. Across these studies, there were two key deviations from event memory effects in passive paradigms. First, gains in contextual certainty regarding the active rule, rather than prediction error, were the primary predictor of memory performance. Second, memory for items experienced around event boundaries was rarely enhanced and was instead hindered for items encoded right after boundaries. These results challenge the emphasis on prediction error for memory effects in interactive contexts and suggest that the cognitive demands of active inference and model updating at event boundaries can impair, rather than enhance, encoding. The findings highlight how the cognitive cost of interaction and building certainty alter memory for events, indicating the need for more nuanced models. More specifically, models of event memory should incorporate costs of cognitive control that interact with encoding benefits, dampening them when control costs are high.

Committee Chair

Zachariah Reagh

Committee Members

Jeffrey Zacks; Neal Morton; Todd Braver; Wouter Kool

Degree

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Author's Department

Psychology

Author's School

Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

Document Type

Dissertation

Date of Award

8-15-2025

Language

English (en)

Author's ORCID

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7032-0355

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Available for download on Saturday, February 14, 2026

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Psychology Commons

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