Leroy Nathan, Majerus Steve, D'Argembeau Arnaud
University of Liège, Belgium.
University of Liège, Belgium.
Cognition. 2024 Jun;247:105789. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2024.105789. Epub 2024 Apr 6.
Remembering the unfolding of past episodes usually takes less time than their actual duration. In this study, we evaluated whether such temporal compression emerges when continuous events are too long to be fully held in working memory. To do so, we asked 90 young adults to watch and mentally replay video clips showing people performing a continuous action (e.g., turning a car jack) that lasted 3, 6, 9, 12, or 15 s. For each clip, participants had to carefully watch the event and then to mentally replay it as accurately and precisely as possible. Results showed that mental replay durations increased with event duration but in a non-linear manner: they were close to the actual event duration for short videos (3-9 s), but significantly smaller for longer videos (12 and 15 s). These results suggest that working memory is temporally limited in its capacity to represent continuous events, which could in part explain why the unfolding of events is temporally compressed in episodic memory.
回忆过去事件的展开过程通常比其实际持续时间花费的时间更少。在本研究中，我们评估了当连续事件过长以至于无法完全保存在工作记忆中时，这种时间压缩是否会出现。为此，我们让90名年轻人观看并在脑海中回放视频片段，这些视频片段展示了人们进行持续3、6、9、12或15秒的连续动作（例如转动汽车千斤顶）。对于每个片段，参与者必须仔细观看事件，然后尽可能准确和精确地在脑海中回放。结果表明，心理回放持续时间随事件持续时间增加，但呈非线性方式：对于短视频（3 - 9秒），它们接近实际事件持续时间，但对于较长视频（12秒和15秒）则明显更短。这些结果表明，工作记忆在表征连续事件的能力上存在时间限制，这可能部分解释了为什么事件的展开在情景记忆中会在时间上被压缩。
