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Optimal Eventfulness of Narratives Breithaupt, Fritz Brower, Eleanor Whaley, Sarah Narrative Event Eventfulness Event cognition; Serial reproduction; Linear and bounded iteration Event memory This study examines whether there is an optimal degree of eventfulness of short narratives. We ask whether there is a specific degree of eventfulness (unexpectedness) that makes them "stick" better than other stories so that they are maintained more faithfully in serial reproduction (telephone games). The result is: probably not. The finding is that there is an impressive correlation of eventfulness rankings of original stories and resulting retellings in serial reproduction, despite the change of many other story elements and almost regardless of low or high eventfulness. Put more simply, people remember and retell “eventfulness” accurately, even when the actual events and circumstances of a story are changed. Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik Fritz Breithaupt and Eleanor Brower and Sarah Whaley 2015 Is Part Of OASIcs, Volume 45, 6th Workshop on Computational Models of Narrative (CMN 2015) InProceedings Text doc-type:ResearchArticle publishedVersion application/pdf doi:10.4230/OASIcs.CMN.2015.12 urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-52775 https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/OASIcs.CMN.2015.12 eng https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/legalcode