Aging and the Comprehension of Narrative Film

A recent theory of event segmentation states that during the perception of ongoing activity, individuals construct and update event models in working memory. This occurs by dividing activity into units (or events) and updating working memory representations at the boundaries between these events. Previous research shows that younger adults tend to segment continuous, everyday activity better than older adults, showing better agreement with group norms on the temporal location of event boundaries. However, past research has also shown that older adults have a preserved ability to comprehend events in narrative text. The present experiment tested whether age differences exist within the segmentation of ongoing activity in narrative film, and how they may differ. Results showed minimal age differences in segmentation between age groups. This supports the possibility that narrative structure may serve to support the comprehension of continuous activity for older adults