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Dissertation
Does event segmentation ability uniquely predict event memory?
Authors: --- --- ---
Year: 2020 Publisher: Leuven KU Leuven. Faculteit Psychologie en Pedagogische Wetenschappen

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Abstract

The way our minds encode information impacts our lives on a daily basis. It determines how we learn and retain, what we recall after a unique experience, and how long we can remember the events. Research on the working of memory has shown that chunking facilitates subsequent recall through the regrouping of informational units. Event segmentation involves the chunking of visual information. This master’s thesis investigates the relationship between event segmentation and subsequent event memory, while taking into account the possible influence of more general cognitive abilities. Specifically, this study examines whether the ability to segment events can predict subsequent memory above and beyond working memory and executive functioning, hereby replicating basic parts of the set-up used by Sargent et al. (2013). They found that segmentation ability does predict event memory above and beyond the contributions of general cognitive abilities. It was expected that the outcome would be similar despite the differences between the studies. The hypothesis was tested with an online application of tests focusing on event segmentation ability, event memory, working memory and executive functioning on Qualtrics. First, to measure segmentation ability, participants were asked to segment the ongoing behavior in a movie. Second, to measure event memory, participants had to write down as much as they could remember from that movie, followed by choosing which of two frames was directly from the movie and finally, put a collection of frames from the movie in the correct order. Last, to measure working memory and executive functioning participants respectively completed shortened versions of the reading span and the operation span task, and a shortened version of the reading with distraction task, all inspired by the set-up of the original tests. Due to the misconstruction of one subtest, and the low internal consistency of three others, the measures of different segmentation-related abilities were unreliable. The residual cognitive test showed that working memory was not significantly related to segmentation ability and the test was not reliable enough to make strong conclusions regarding the main hypothesis. The correlation between segmentation ability and subsequent event memory was low, possibly due to the fact that only one rater scored the results of the residual event memory task. In conclusion, the core question could not be answered.

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