Eye fixations and recognition memory for pictures

Abstract

Three experiments were performed investigating the extent to which recognition memory for pictures can be predicted by eye-movement patterns on the picture at the time of study. In each experiment, 180 pictures were viewed followed by a yes-no recognition test on all the pictures. Eye movements were recorded at the time of study. Experiment I investigated payoff structure: It was found that higher-valued pictures both received more fixations and were remembered better than low-valued pictures, but when number of fixations was held constant, memory performance was independent of value. Experiment II showed that (a) when pictures are viewed for a fixed amount of time, memory performance is a positive function of number of fixations on the picture, (b) with number of fixations held constant, performance is independent of exposure time, and (c) there is no memory for pictures which were originally viewed only peripherally. In Expt. III, pictures were viewed either normally or while a distracting task (counting backward by threes) was being performed concurrently. The distracting task was found to reduce both number of fixations and memory performance for a picture. When number of fixations was held constant, performance was still better for normally viewed pictures, suggesting that the distracting task was doing more to inhibit encoding besides simply reducing the fixation rate.