Avery Sparacino, “What Can Eye Movements Tell Us About Memory Encoding and Retrieval?”
Mentor: Deborah Hannula, Psychology
Poster #169

The way we view pictures can affect memory outcomes. For example, pictures are better remembered when participants make more fixations to different parts of those pictures during an encoding phase. Similarly, studies have indicated that eye movements during test are sensitive to memory for previously encoded pictures. In the present experiment, scenes are presented repeatedly during an incidental encoding phase and then, at test, some of these pictures are modified and some are repeated without a change. The goal is to examine the relationship between viewing behavior during encoding, directed to the part of a scene that might go on to be changed, and memory performance during the test phase. Test phase performance was examined using explicit recognition responses (e.g., identifying a picture as modified or failing to do so) and eye-movement behavior to the modified part of the scene. Currently, there is some debate in the literature about whether or not eye-movement behavior is sensitive to changes in scenes even when those changes are not explicitly reported. Here, we will examine whether viewing directed to critical regions of to-be modified scenes during encoding predict a participant’s ability to correctly identify the change at test. In addition, we will examine whether the critical region is viewed disproportionately during the test phase, even when recognition responses are incorrect, provided that the critical region was looked at during the encoding phase. Results will help adjudicate between competing claims about the sensitivity of eye movements to memory with and without awareness.