It's all about location: reliance on spatial rather than visual context when trying to remember

Abstract

When people try to remember visual information, they often move their eyes similarly to encoding. The mechanism underlying this behavior has not yet been fully understood. Specifically, it is unclear whether the purpose of this behavior is to recreate the visual input produced during encoding, or the motor and spatial elements of encoding. In this experiment, participants (N=40) encoded pairs of greyscale objects, overlaying colored squares. During test, participants were asked about objects orientation, while presented with squares of the same colors, either at the same location (controlled trials) or switched in their locations (test trials) relative to encoding. Results show that during test trials, participants tended to gaze at the square appearing at the location where the remembered object was previously presented, rather than on the square of the same color. This indicates a superiority of motor and spatial elements of eye movements rather than near-peripheral visual cues.