Department of Psychology, Yale University.
Department of Psychology, University of Chicago.
J Exp Psychol Learn Mem Cogn. 2023 Jun;49(6):889-899. doi: 10.1037/xlm0001168. Epub 2022 Oct 6.
Our most moving experiences, the ones that "stick," are hardly ever static but are dynamic, like a conversation, a gesture, or a dance. Previous work has shown robust memory for simple actions (e.g., jumping or turning), but it remains an open question how we remember more dynamic sequences of complex and expressive actions. Separately, with static images, previous work has found remarkable consistency in which images are remembered or forgotten across people-that is, an intrinsic "memorability"-but it is unclear whether semantically ambiguous and expressive actions might similarly be consistently remembered, despite the varying interpretations of what they could mean. How do we go from static memories to more memorable dynamic experiences? Using the test case of a rich and abstract series of actions from dance, we discover memorability as an intrinsic attribute of movement. Across genres, some movements were consistently remembered, regardless of the perceiver, and even regardless of the dancer. Among a comprehensive set of memory, movement, and aesthetic attributes, consistency in which movements people remembered was most predicted by subjective memorability, and importantly by both subjective (observer ratings) and objective (optical flow analysis) measures of the scale of motion, such that the less overall motion in a dance segment, the more memorable the movements tended to be. Importantly, we discover that memorability of a sequence is additive, where the memorability of individual snapshots and constituent moments ultimately contribute to the memorability of longer sequences. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).
我们最动人的经历，那些“刻骨铭心”的经历，几乎从来都不是静态的，而是像对话、手势或舞蹈那样充满动态。先前的研究已经表明，人们对简单动作（如跳跃或转身）有着强大的记忆，但对于如何记忆更复杂、更富有表现力的动作的动态序列，这仍然是一个悬而未决的问题。另一方面，对于静态图像，先前的研究发现，人们对某些图像的记忆或遗忘具有显著的一致性——也就是说，存在内在的“可记性”——但尚不清楚语义上模糊和富有表现力的动作是否也可能具有类似的一致性记忆，尽管它们的含义可能因人而异。我们如何从静态记忆转变为更令人难忘的动态体验？通过舞蹈中丰富而抽象的一系列动作这一典型案例，我们发现可记性是运动的内在属性。在不同的舞蹈流派中，有些动作无论观察者是谁，甚至无论舞蹈者是谁，都能被一致地记住。在一系列综合的记忆、运动和审美属性中，人们记住的动作的一致性最能被动作的主观可记性所预测，而重要的是，被观察者的主观（观察者评分）和客观（光流分析）运动尺度测量所预测，即舞蹈片段中的整体运动越少，动作就越容易被记住。重要的是，我们发现序列的可记性是可累加的，单个快照和组成瞬间的可记性最终有助于更长序列的可记性。
