PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Carl J. Hodgetts
AU  - Mark Postans
AU  - Angharad N. Williams
TI  - The association between real-world experiential diversity and event cognition
AID  - 10.1101/2022.07.07.499122
DP  - 2022 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 2022.07.07.499122
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2022/07/07/2022.07.07.499122.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2022/07/07/2022.07.07.499122.full
AB  - The ability to effectively parse our experience into meaningful events is thought to be critical for structuring episodic memory, engaging in daily activities, and navigating the social and spatial environment. Despite this, little is known about how inter-individual variation in this ability emerges. Within a sample of 159 young adults, we found that the degree to which individuals were exposed to a diverse range of social and spatial experiences (experiential diversity) was significantly related to event segmentation, such that individuals with greater daily variation in their social and spatial lives produced more fine-grained event segmentations during a movie-viewing task. Moreover, this effect remained when controlling for potential confounds, such as anxiety and loneliness. These results provide new insights into how real-world experiences may shape key memory encoding mechanisms, providing a potential cognitive pathway through which social disconnectedness impacts cognitive health and wellbeing.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.