Across the Event Horizon

The stream of action in life, virtual environments, film, and narratives is parsed into events. This parsing has consequences for memory. The transition from one event to another can impede memory in some ways but improve it in others. Whether impairment or improvement occurs depends on the nature of the information and how it is later remembered. The Event Horizon Model of comprehension and memory goes beyond more traditional accounts of the influence of context on cognition to explain these phenomena.