Implicit boundaries are remembered better than non-boundaries in statistical learning

Changes in temporal context have been shown to impact episodic memory of the 'boundary' items involved in creating this temporal context. However, in most prior studies, changes in temporal context have been operationalized explicitly, typically through perceptually obvious visual or auditory stimuli that form a boundary between the previous and current context. In this work, we explore how recognition of items is impacted when temporal context change is operationalized implicitly through the order of presentation during the study phase. 57 participants, were exposed to a rotation judgment cover task for 15 randomly generated polygon items. Around half of the participants were presented with these items in a random order. The other half were presented with items such that 6 items formed ‘boundaries’ that led in and out of 3 temporal clusters. Similar to findings where boundaries are explicitly operationalized, we show that implicit boundaries are also better remembered than non-boundary items.