Event Perception and Understanding

How do people identify the temporal parts of events and the relations amongst those parts? Research in the lab has shown that observers spontaneously encode activity in terms of their temporal parts and subparts, and that this structure influences how they talk about activity and how they remember it later. Using functional MRI, we have identified a network of brain regions that responds selectively at event part boundaries, independent of whether the observer is consciously attending to these boundaries. Current work in the lab explores the role of different components of this network, and examines the influence of event structure on attention and memory.

>> Zacks, J. M., Braver, T.S., Sheridan, M.A., Donaldson, D.I., Snyder, A.Z., Ollinger, J.M., Buckner, R.L., & Raichle, M.E. (2001). Human brain activity time-locked to perceptual event boundaries. Nature Neuroscience, 4, 651-655.

>> Zacks, J. M., & Tversky, B. (2001). Event structure in perception and conception. Psychological Bulletin, 127, 3-21.

>> Zacks, J. M., Tversky, B., & Iyer, G. (2001). Perceiving, remembering, and communicating structure in events, Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 130, 29-58.

>> Tversky, B., Morrison, J., & Zacks, J. M. (2002). On bodies and events. In A. Meltzoff & W. Prinz (Eds.), The imitative mind: Development, evolution, and brain bases (pp. 221-232). New York: Cambridge University Press.

>> Zacks, J. M., & Tversky, B. (2003). Structuring Information Interfaces For Procedural Learning. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 9, 88-100.

>> Michelon, P., Snyder, A. Z., Buckner, R. L., McAvoy, M., & Zacks, J. M. (2003). Neural correlates of incongruous visual information: An event-related fMRI study. NeuroImage, 19, 1612-1626.

>> Swallow, K. M., Braver, T. S., Snyder, A. Z., Speer, N. K., & Zacks, J. M. (2003). Reliability of Functional Localization Using fMRI. NeuroImage, 20, 1561-1577.

>> Speer, N. K., Swallow, K. M., & Zacks, J. M. (2003). Activation of human motion processing areas during event perception. Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience, 3, 335-345.

>> Zacks, J. M. (2004). Using movement and intentions to understand simple events. Cognitive Science, 28, 979-1008.

>> Speer, N. K., & Zacks, J. M. (2005). Temporal changes as event boundaries: Processing and memory consequences of narrative time shifts. Journal of Memory and Language, 53, 125-140.

>> Fox, M. D., Snyder, A. Z., Zacks, J. M., & Raichle, M. E. (2005). Coherent spontaneous activity accounts for trial-to-trial variability in human evoked brain responses. Nature Neuroscience, 9, 23-25.

>> Zacks, J. M., Swallow, K. M., Vettel, J. M., & McAvoy, M. P. (2006). Visual motion and the neural correlates of event perception. Brain Research, 1076, 150-162.

>> Zacks, J. M., Speer, N. K., Vettel, J. M., & Jacoby, L. J. (2006). Event understanding and memory in healthy aging and dementia of the Alzheimer type. Psychology and Aging, 21, 466-482.

>> Zacks, J. M., Speer, N. K., Swallow, K. M., Braver, T. S., & Reynolds, J. R. (2007). Event perception: A mind/brain perspective. Psychological Bulletin, 133, 273-293.

>> Zacks, J. M., & Swallow, K. M. (2007). Event segmentation. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 16, 80-84.

>> Reynolds, J. R., Zacks, J. M., & Braver, T. S. (2007). A computational model of event segmentation from perceptual prediction. Cognitive Science, 31, 613-643.

>> Speer, N. K., Zacks, J. M., & Reynolds, J. R. (2007). Human brain activity time-locked to narrative event boundaries. Psychological Science, 18, 449-455.

>> Tversky, B., Zacks, J. M., & Martin, B. (2008). The structure of experience. In T. F. Shipley & J. M. Zacks (Eds.), Understanding events: From perception to action. (pp. 436-464).

>> Swallow, K. M., & Zacks, J. M. (2008). Sequences learned without awareness can orient attention during the perception of human activity. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review.

>> Kurby, C. A. & Zacks, J. M. (2008). Segmentation in the perception and memory of events. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 12, 72-79.

>> Yarkoni, T., Speer, N. K., Zacks, J. M. (2008). Neural substrates of narrative comprehension and memory . Neuroimage, 41, 1408-1425.

>> Zacks, J., Speer, N., Reynolds, J.R. (In Press). Situation changes predict the perception of event boundaries, reading time, and perceived predictability in narrative comprehension. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General.

>> Zacks, J. M. (2008). Event perception. Scholarpedia, 3, 3837.

For a more complete list, download Jeff Zacks's curriculum vitae.

Event Perception and Understanding

St. Louis, MO 63130-4899

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