title: Spatial But Not Oculomotor Information Biases Perceptual Memory: Evidence From Face Perception and Cognitive Modeling.
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.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Bern.|Center for Cognition, Learning and Memory, University of Bern.
authors.forename: Andrea L
authors.initials: AL
authors.lastname: Wantz
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Bern.|Center for Cognition, Learning and Memory, University of Bern.
authors.forename: Janek S
authors.initials: JS
authors.lastname: Lobmaier
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Bern.|Center for Cognition, Learning and Memory, University of Bern.
authors.forename: Fred W
authors.initials: FW
authors.lastname: Mast
authors.affiliation: Center for Cognition, Learning and Memory, University of Bern.|Department of Physiology, University of Bern.
authors.forename: Walter
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Senn
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology; D003071:Cognition / Q000502:physiology*; D005133:Eye Movements / Q000502:physiology*; D000066499:Facial Recognition / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008568:Memory / Q000502:physiology*; D008875:Middle Aged; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D013028:Space Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D065852:Spatial Memory / Q000502:physiology; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Cognitive model; Eye movements; Memory; Perceptual memory