The effects of domain knowledge and event structure on event processing

Research suggests that domain knowledge facilitates memory for domain-specific information through two mechanisms: differentiation, which involves the ability to identify meaningful, fine-grained details within a sequence, and unitization, which involves binding individual components from a sequence into functional wholes. This study investigated the extent to which individuals engaged in differentiation and unitization when parsing continuous events into discrete, meaningful units (i.e., event segmentation) and recalling them. Participants watched and segmented basketball videos. They then rewatched the videos and provided descriptions afterward. Videos were coded for the presence of higher order goals (A2 actions) and the individual sub-actions that comprised them (A1 actions). Results suggested that event segmentation behavior for participants with less knowledge was more aligned with changes in basic actions (A1 actions) than for participants with greater knowledge. When describing events, participants with greater knowledge were more likely than participants with less knowledge to use statements that reflected unitization.