Event cognition research has typically considered events to be contiguous in time, with defined starts and ends. However, people sometimes engage in more than one event at the same time. If this happens frequently, then theories of event cognition may require modification. This research study aims to estimate how often people engage in multitasking in daily life. Ninety-seven participants were asked whether they had been multitasking at four time points during the last 24 hours. Forty-five per cent of responses reported multitasking with a diverse range of event structures. Twenty-one per cent of reports specifically listed multiple overlapping activities. The prevalence of multitasking suggests that theories of event cognition need to be expanded to accommodate non-contiguous and simultaneous events.

Research in event cognition highlights the crucial role of event segmentation in shaping perceptions and memories. Anticipation of event boundaries is influenced by characteristic duration, often assumed to follow normal distributions in daily events. This study replicates recent investigations into event duration using a nightly segmentation approach with continuously captured daily images. Forty-one participants collected images over fourteen days, segmenting them into events. Event durations for various activities were modelled using truncated normal, exponential and gamma models. Our findings align with prior research in event distribution, revealing that overall, an exponential or gamma distribution provides a superior fit compared to a truncated normal distribution. This suggests that when daily events are studied in an ecological context at a fundamental level, most of them have little sign of a typical duration. Consequently, duration estimation is unlikely to play a large role in anticipating event boundaries.

Traditional event cognition research typically characterises events as continuous, each bounded by a single beginning and a single ending. Daily events, however, often seem to involve discontinuities. For instance, if one is in a meeting that is temporarily interrupted by a phone call, one retains two events—the meeting and the phone call—rather than three, which include the meeting before the phone call, the phone call itself, and the meeting subsequent to the call. This study explores what binds events together across these discontinuities in everyday life. We examined five potential binding factors: place, people, topic, activity, and goal. Fifty-one participants provided data on recent non-contiguous daily life events, revealing that 97% of these events were tied by the 'Activity' aspect, followed by the 'Place' aspect (82%) and 'Goal' aspect (56%). 'People' (48%) and 'Topic' aspects (24%) were less significant in unifying non-contiguous events. The proportion of each event aspect in non-contiguous events suggests a need to expand theories of event cognition to focus on what brings events together rather than solely on what separates them—a perspective often overlooked in cognitive event theories.