Spatial But Not Oculomotor Information Biases Perceptual Memory: Evidence From Face Perception and Cognitive Modeling |
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| Authors: | Andrea L. Wantz Janek S. Lobmaier Fred W. Mast Walter Senn |
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| Affiliation: | 1. Department of PsychologyUniversity of Bern;2. Center for Cognition, Learning and MemoryUniversity of Bern;3. Department of PhysiologyUniversity of Bern |
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| Abstract: | Recent research put forward the hypothesis that eye movements are integrated in memory representations and are reactivated when later recalled. However, “looking back to nothing” during recall might be a consequence of spatial memory retrieval. Here, we aimed at distinguishing between the effect of spatial and oculomotor information on perceptual memory. Participants’ task was to judge whether a morph looked rather like the first or second previously presented face. Crucially, faces and morphs were presented in a way that the morph reactivated oculomotor and/or spatial information associated with one of the previously encoded faces. Perceptual face memory was largely influenced by these manipulations. We considered a simple computational model with an excellent match (4.3% error) that expresses these biases as a linear combination of recency, saccade, and location. Surprisingly, saccades did not play a role. The results suggest that spatial and temporal rather than oculomotor information biases perceptual face memory. |
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| Keywords: | Eye movements Memory Perceptual memory Cognitive model |
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