Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Conventional methods in event cognition often focus on identifying boundaries by instructing participants to mark transitions. While effective for detecting shifts, they offer limited insight into how events unfold. This study examines six characteristics—location, people, activities, mood, bodily states, and purposeful actions—and their stability across daily events. Using nightly segmentation, 41 participants captured and reviewed daily images over 14 days, defined events, and described each using the six dimensions. People (0.58) and location (0.55) were most stable, followed by mood (0.38) and bodily states (0.31). Activities (0.07) and purposeful actions (0.18) were highly variable. These findings emphasise that characteristics such as goals and activities not only serve as effective markers for identifying transitions at boundaries but also provide valuable perspectives on how events are distinguished and understood within the broader context of daily life. Keywords: Daily Events, Event Cognition, Nightly Segmentation.