Abstract
Previous research has been inconclusive as to the role of eye movements in episodic scene recognition. We investigated this issue by focusing on perceptual reinstatement. In two scene recognition experiments, eye movements were registered during study and test. At test participants indicated their recollective experience as based on explicit recolletion and familiarity respectivly. In Experiment 1, participants studied scenes under different concurernt tasks. This manipulation produced parallel effects on eye movements and recollection. Furthermore, eye movement consistency across study and test differentiated recollective experience. Specifically, explicit recollection was characterized by a higher consistency than familiarity-based responses. However, number of study fixations was correlated with the consistency measure. In Experiment 2, we obtained control over number of fixations through a gaze contingent paradigm, and corroborated the consistency results. Our findings are in line with general theories of episodic memory such as the transfer apporpriate processing account and the encoding specificity principle. The results indicate that active gaze control is an important component in episodic scene recognition.