Maintaining fixation does not increase demands on working memory relative to free viewing (original) (raw)
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The selective disruption of spatial working memory by eye movements
The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 2006
In the late 1970s/early 1980s, Baddeley and colleagues conducted a series of experiments investigating the role of eye movements in visual working memory. Although only described briefly in a book , these studies have influenced a remarkable number of empirical and theoretical developments in fields ranging from experimental psychology to human neuropsychology to nonhuman primate electrophysiology. This paper presents, in full detail, three critical studies from this series, together with a recently performed study that includes a level of eye movement measurement and control that was not available for the older studies. Together, the results demonstrate several facts about the sensitivity of visuospatial working memory to eye movements. First, it is eye movement control, not movement per se, that produces the disruptive effects. Second, these effects are limited to working memory for locations, and do not generalize to visual working memory for shapes. Third, they can be isolated to the storage/maintenance components of working memory (e.g., to the delay period of the delayed-recognition task). These facts have important implications for models of visual working memory.
Experimental brain research, 2017
Visuospatial working memory (VSWM) is a set of cognitive processes used to encode, maintain and manipulate spatial information. One important feature of VSWM is that it has a limited capacity such that only few items can be actively stored and manipulated simultaneously. Given the limited capacity, it is important to determine the conditions that affect memory performance as this will improve our understanding of the architecture and function of VSWM. Previous studies have shown that VSWM is disrupted when task-irrelevant eye movements are performed during the maintenance phase; however, relatively fewer studies examined the role of eye movements performed during the encoding phase. On one hand, performing eye movements during the encoding phase could result in a stronger memory trace because the memory formation is reinforced by the activation of the motor system. On the other hand, performing eye movements to each target could disrupt the configural processing of the spatial array...
The contribution of eye movements to memory retrieval depends on the visual input
When attempting to recall previously seen visual information, people often move their eyes to the same locations where they initially viewed it. These eye-movements are thought to serve a role in enhancing memory retrieval, although the exact mechanism underlying this effect is yet unknown. To investigate this link between eye-movements and memory, we conducted an experiment with 80 adult participants. Participants were asked to perform a memory retrieval task, while viewing either the same visual context as during encoding or an altered one.Results showed that the benefit of eye movements to memory retrieval was dependent on the visual input. This suggests that the contribution of eye-movements to memory may not be from the motor behavior itself, but from its visual consequences. Our findings thus challenge the hypothesis that eye movements act as a motor retrieval cue and support the view that their visual consequences act as a sensory one.Statement of RelevanceAn intriguing quest...
Fixation duration surpasses pupil size as a measure of memory load in free viewing
Frontiers in human neuroscience, 2014
Oculomotor behavior reveals, not only the acquisition of visual information at fixation, but also the accumulation of information in memory across subsequent fixations. Two candidate measures were considered as indicators of such dynamic visual memory load: fixation duration and pupil size. While recording these measures, we displayed an arrangement of 3, 4 or 5 targets among distractors. Both occurred in various orientations. Participants searched for targets and reported whether in a subsequent display one of them had changed orientation. We determined to what extent fixation duration and pupil size indicate dynamic memory load, as a function of the number of targets fixated during the search. We found that fixation duration reflects the number of targets, both when this number is within and above the limit of working memory capacity. Pupil size reflects the number of targets only when it exceeds the capacity limit. Moreover, the duration of fixations on successive targets but not...
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 2006
Paying attention to an object facilitates its storage in working memory. The authors investigate whether the opposite is also true: whether items in working memory influence the deployment of attention. Participants performed a search for a prespecified target while they held another item in working memory. In some trials this memory item was present in the search display as a distractor. Such a distractor has no effect on search time if the search target is in the display. In that case, the item in working memory is unlikely to be selected as a target for an eye movement, and if the eyes do land on it, fixation duration is short. In the absence of the target, however, there is a small but significant effect of the memory item on search time. The authors conclude that the target for visual search has a special status in working memory that allows it to guide attention. Guidance of attention by other items in working memory is much weaker and can be observed only if the search target is not present in the display.
Effect of memory load on eye movement control: A study using the reading span test
2014
We investigated the effect of memory load on attentional control using the Reading Span Test (RST), a task that requires working memory capacity. Previous studies have shown that a shortage of working memory resources leads to a deficit of inhibition of taskirrelevant information and that memory load affects eye movement control. Here, we recorded eye movement and integrated it with RST performance. Total fixation time and the number of regressions showed a memory load effect with the to-be-remembered word, and RST performance was also affected under high memory load. We concluded that a shortage of working memory resources caused by memory load prevents flexible eye movement control and may cause a deficit in inhibitory control based on intrusion errors.
Eye and hand movements during reconstruction of spatial memory
Perception, 2012
Recent behavioural and biological evidence indicates common mechanisms serving working memory and attention (eg Awh et al, 2006 Neuroscience 139 201-208). This study explored the role of spatial attention and visual search in an adapted Corsi spatial memory task. Eye movements and touch responses were recorded from participants who recalled locations (signalled by colour or shape change) from an array presented either simultaneously or sequentially. The time delay between target presentation and recall (0, 5, or 10 s) and the number of locations to be remembered (2-5) were also manipulated. Analysis of the response phase revealed subjects were less accurate (touch data) and fixated longer (eye data) when responding to sequentially presented targets suggesting higher cognitive effort. Fixation duration on target at recall was also influenced by whether spatial location was initially signalled by colour or shape change. Finally, we found that the sequence tasks encouraged longer fixations on the signalled targets than simultaneous viewing during encoding, but no difference was observed during recall. We conclude that the attentional manipulations (colour/shape) mainly affected the eye movement parameters, whereas the memory manipulation (sequential versus simultaneous, number of items) mainly affected the performance of the hand during recall, and thus the latter is more important for ascertaining if an item is remembered or forgotten. In summary, the nature of the stimuli that is used and how it is presented play key roles in determining subject performance and behaviour during spatial memory tasks.
Working memory load disrupts gaze-cued orienting of attention
A large body of work has shown that a perceived gaze shift produces a shift in a viewer's spatial attention in the direction of the seen gaze. A controversial issue surrounds the extent to which this gaze-cued orienting effect is stimulus-driven, or is under a degree of top-down control. In two experiments we show that the gaze-cued orienting effect is disrupted by a concurrent task that has been shown to place high demands on executive resources: random number generation (RNG). In Experiment 1 participants were faster to locate targets that appeared in gaze-cued locations relative to targets that appeared in locations opposite to those indicated by the gaze shifts, while simultaneously and continuously reciting aloud the digits 1–9 in order; however, this gaze-cueing effect was eliminated when participants continuously recited the same digits in a random order. RNG was also found to interfere with gaze-cued orienting in Experiment 2 where participants performed a speeded letter identification response. Together, these data suggest that gaze-cued orienting is actually under top-down control. We argue that top-down signals sustain a goal to shift attention in response to gazes, such that orienting ordinarily occurs when they are perceived; however, the goal cannot always be maintained when concurrent, multiple, competing goals are simultaneously active in working memory.
The relationship between delay period eye movements and visuospatial memory
We investigated whether overt shifts of attention were associated with visuospatial memory performance. Participants were required to study the locations of a set of visual objects and subsequently detect changes to the spatial location of one of the objects following a brief delay period. Relational information regarding the locations among all of the objects could be used to support performance on the task (Experiment 1) or relational information was removed during test and location manipulation judgments had to be made for a singly presented target item (Experiment 2). We computed the similarity of the fixation patterns in space during the study phase to the fixations made during the delay period. Greater fixation pattern similarity across participants was associated with higher accuracy when relational information was available at test (Experiment 1); however, this association was not observed when the target item was presented in isolation during the test display (Experiment 2). Similarly, increased fixation pattern similarity on a given trial (within participants) was associated with successful task performance when the relations among studied items could be used for comparison (Experiment 1), but not when memory for absolute spatial location was assessed (Experiment 2). This pattern of behavior and performance on the two tasks suggested that eye movements facilitated memory for the relationships among objects. Shifts of attention through eye movements may provide a mechanism for the maintenance of relational visuospatial memory.