Memory in motion: how real-life event features influence the tempo of episodic recall.

Abstract

How do people mentally replay real-life events, and what shapes the time it takes to remember them? In this study, we investigated the temporal compression of memories by examining how long it takes participants to recall everyday events they recorded using wearable cameras. While remembering duration increased with the actual length of events, this relationship was nonlinear: recall duration rose steeply for events lasting up to ∼10 min, then plateaued, suggesting scale-invariant retrieval beyond this threshold. Crucially, various event characteristics also influenced remembering duration, with events that were more unusual, unpredictable, emotionally positive, socially engaging, or marked by greater change showing less temporal compression. These effects were not explained by retrieval difficulty, but rather reflected the richness of memory representations, including greater detail and stronger sense of reliving. Together, these findings suggest that memory compression depends not only on the event's actual duration, but also on how it was subjectively experienced and structured in memory. By linking event features to the tempo of recall, this study offers novel insight into the dynamics of episodic memory and the mechanisms that shape how we mentally replay real-life experiences.