Abstract
Memorizing time of an event may employ two processes (i) encoding of the absolute time of events within an episode, (ii) encoding of its relative order. Here we study interaction between these two processes. We performed experiments in which one or two items were presented, after which participants were asked to report the time of occurrence of items. When a single item was presented, the distribution of reported times was quite wide. When two items are presented, the relative order among them strongly affected the reported time of each of them. Bayesian theory that takes into account the memory for the events order is compatible with the experimental data, in particular in terms of the effect of order on absolute time reports. Our results suggest that people do not deduce order from memorized time, instead people’s memory for absolute time of events relies critically on memorized order of the events.
Competing Interest Statement
The authors have declared no competing interest.
Footnotes
Abstract was shortened to accommodate e-life limits. link to data repository was added