The present study investigated how encountering event boundaries in narratives modulates memory formation. Participants listened to five-sentence stories in which a critical word in the third sentence either continued the ongoing event (no-boundary) or marked a transition to a new event (boundary), followed by two sentences confirming the action. Memory for these critical words was later assessed with a recognition memory task, followed by an associative memory test. In this test, correctly recognized critical words were presented as probes, and participants judged which of two words had appeared in the same story as the probe word. Two associative pairs were examined: preceding pairs (critical word paired with a word from the second sentence) and following pairs (critical word paired with a word from the fifth sentence).

Critical words marking an event boundary were remembered better than no-boundary words. While associative memory for preceding pairs did not differ between conditions, memory for following pairs was enhanced in the no-boundary condition, reflecting the benefit of maintained contextual stability. An analysis restricted to boundary words with correct high-confidence responses revealed enhanced associative memory for preceding than for following pairs.

Taken together, these findings suggest that contextual stability supports memory integration for following pairs. In contrast, boundaries enhance memory for the boundary itself, likely by directing attention to changes in the story. This attentional shift appears to strengthen associations with preceding information, as indicated by high-confidence responses, possibly through reinstatement processes that solidify the memory trace of the preceding event with the new event.