Narrative coherence warps the timeline of recalled naturalistic events

Memories of experiences are often tied together, where remembering one experience can spark memories of others. One may link temporally distant events based on their meaning or recall closely occurring events together. Linking based on temporal organization has been studied in simple list-learning paradigms, but less is known about how these effects manifest in real-life experiences. Here, we investigate how meaningful connections in a narrative interact with temporal context to influence recall. Participants encoded picture stories featuring multiple subplots, some of which connected across time (Coherent Narratives), while others did not (Unrelated Narratives). Replicating prior findings, Coherent Narratives were better recalled than Unrelated Narratives, regardless of temporal distance between events using character-cued (N=39 and N=36) and free recall (N=39) tasks. Extending this work, free recall analyses revealed that temporally separated Coherent Narrative event pairs were recalled contiguously, suggesting that memories are bridged through meaningful connections, not just temporal structure.