Event segmentation allows the flow of information experienced in life to be partitioned into distinct episodes, facilitating understanding of the world, action within it, and the ability to store information in memory. One basis on which experiences are segmented is the presence of physical boundaries, such as walking through doorways. Previous findings have shown that event segmentation has a significant influence on memory, with better memory for events occurring within a single boundary (compared to events that cross boundaries). By manipulating the features of boundaries and the amount of information presented between boundaries the present research investigates the nature of event boundaries. We make use of a virtual learning environment to present lists of words in virtual rooms, testing memory for the word lists as a function of the presence or absence of spatial-temporal gaps and physical boundaries during encoding (i.e., by maintaining participants within individual rooms or moving them through doorways between rooms). Across four experiments, we show that segmenting information with spatial-temporal gaps results in an increase in clustering (reflecting the structure imposed at encoding) an increase in the number of words remembered during later tests of episodic recall (a memory benefit) and an increase in recalling the words in the order of presentation. Importantly, however, the data show that the presence of doorways is not required for event segmentation to benefit memory: increases in clustering, memory for temporal order and recall performance were found with temporal gaps alone. Furthermore, the results suggest that episodic memory may be optimised if the amount of information between boundaries can be maintained within working memory. We discuss the implications of the findings for Event Segmentation Theory and propose an alternative theoretical account of the episodic memory benefits based on temporal clustering.

通过事件细分，可以将生活中经历的信息流划分为不同的情节，从而有助于理解世界，其中的动作以及将信息存储在内存中的能力。划分经验的基础之一是存在物理边界，例如走过门口。先前的发现表明，事件分段对内存有重大影响，对于在单个边界内发生的事件（与跨越边界的事件相比）具有更好的记忆。通过操纵边界的特征和边界之间呈现的信息量，本研究调查了事件边界的性质。我们利用虚拟学习环境来呈现虚拟房间中的单词列表，根据编码过程中是否存在时空间隙和物理边界来测试单词列表的记忆（即，通过将参与者保持在单个房间内或通过房间之间的门道将其移动）。在四个实验中，我们显示了使用时空间隙对信息进行分割会导致聚类的增加（反映编码时施加的结构），在以后的情景回忆测试中记忆的单词数量也会增加（记忆的好处），并且增加在按陈述顺序回忆单词时。然而重要的是，数据表明事件分段不需要门口的存在即可使记忆受益：聚类的增加，时间顺序的记忆和召回性能仅在时间上存在差距。此外，结果表明，如果可以在工作记忆内保持边界之间的信息量，则可以优化情景记忆。我们讨论了事件分割理论的发现的含义，并提出了基于时间聚类的情节记忆利益的另一种理论解释。