THE UNITIZATION AND MEMORY OF EVENTS

Hanson and Hirst (1989) presented 4 studies that seemingly demonstrated that level of unitization of an ongoing event (cf. Newtson, 1973) influences the subsequent recall, but not recognition, of action-related details from that event. They thus concluded that level of unitization affects how information is represented in memory, but not what information is represented. Previous articles (Lassiter, 1988; Lassiter, Stone, & Rogers, 1988), however, conflict with Hanson and Hirst in reporting that both the recall and the recognition of events are influenced by level of unitization. Meta-analyses of these combined data show that the discrepancy between Hanson and Hirst and earlier work is more illusory than real and, most important, clearly indicate the existence of an effect of level of unitization on recognition as well as recall. On the basis of these results, it is argued that level of unitization does indeed affect what information is represented in memory.