Causality and Agency Shape Memory for a Real-Life Dynamic Social Experience

While time flows uniformly, many factors can influence how experiences become organized in memory. The current study examined how causality and agency impact the temporal structure of memory for a virtual escape room game played with friends. We found that after controlling for veridical temporal distance, causally-related events were remembered as closer in time than unrelated events. This effect grew stronger after a consolidation period, with causally-connected memories showing greater temporal integration than memories that merely shared contextual overlap. Notably, within causally-related events, temporal memory was superior for events where game clues were found than when they were used to resolve ambiguity. We also demonstrated that participants who made greater in-game contributions to puzzle-solving showed better temporal memory compared to participants who contributed less. High contributors also showed increased temporal integration between contextually-related events in particular. Together, these findings highlight the role of causal connections in driving memory integration and extend prior work on agency and memory to real-world experiences.