I see you remembering: What eye movements can reveal about process characteristics of prospective memory

Josephine Hartwig, Katharina Schnitzspahn, Matthias Kliegel, Boris Velichkovsky, Jens Helmert

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

8 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Prospective memory performance describes the delayed execution of an intended action. As this requires a mixture of memory and attentional control functions, current research aims at delineating the specific processes associated with solving a prospective memory task. Therefore, the current study measured, analysed and compared eye movements of participants who performed a prospective memory, a free viewing, and a visual search task. By keeping constant the prospective memory cue as well as the context of tasks, we aimed at putting the processes of solving prospective memory tasks into context. The results show, that when a prospective memory task is missed, the continuous gaze behaviour is rather similar to the gaze behaviour during free viewing. When the prospective memory task is successfully solved, on the other hand, average gaze behaviour is between free viewing and visual search. Furthermore, individual differences in eye movements were found between low and high performers. Our data suggest that a prospective memory task can be solved in different ways, therefore different processes can be observed.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)193-199
Number of pages7
JournalInternational Journal of Psychophysiology
Volume88
Issue number2
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - May 2013

Bibliographical note

Acknowledgments
JH and JRH were co-financed by the European Social Fund and the Free State of Saxony, Germany, in the framework of the junior research group CogITo.

The authors would like to thank Johannes Schulz for support with the calculation of skewness of Voronoi cell size distributions, Sebastian Pannasch for valuable comments on a former version of the manuscript and an anonymous reviewer for valuable suggestions that were incorporated to improve the paper.

Keywords

  • eye movements
  • prospective memory
  • Voronoi method

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