Remembering time: The role of event structure in duration representation

This thesis investigates the role of event structure in duration representation. A combination of behavioural and neuroimaging techniques was used to examine the effect of the number of perceived segments and the relative similarity between them on memory representations and estimates of duration. Behavioural studies in Chapter 2 showed that an increase in the number of perceived segments and a decrease in perceived similarity between them lead to longer estimates of duration when reconstructing duration based on a memory representation of content. Chapter 3 investigated whether representations of duration arising from language are similar to those from visual stimuli, indicating that for language, an increase in the number of segments but not the similarity between them leads to longer estimates. Chapter 4 investigated whether event structure also affects time monitoring, showing that estimated duration increases as an effect of the number of segments and dissimilarity between them when both time and content are attended to, but that only the number of coarse segments plays a role when only time is attended to. Together, these findings corroborate the idea that duration reconstruction relies on the encoded event structure, as the role of event structure is diminished when content is not remembered. However, on a coarse level, the number of event boundaries may also guide the encoding of duration. Chapter 5 investigated the neural underpinnings of duration reconstruction using fMRI, showing that activity in left hippocampus is modulated by event structure. Finally, a behavioural experiment in Chapter 6 investigated the effect of event structure on the mental reproduction of events, showing that the duration of this replay increases as an effect of more segments and less similarity between them. Together, these findings suggest that event structure affects memory representations, with more segments and less similarity between them leading to longer duration reconstructions.