Abstract
Memory for scenes is important. How we use memory when directing eye movements during visual search is an important aspect of visual cognition. To investigate the use of gaze during recall for objects and location, we asked subjects to look at an image containing objects randomly placed within a grid on a white background, after which they were asked to recall if an object had been present in that display. They then had to immediately saccade over an empty grid to the location where that object had been. While they could successfully recall the presence of an object, subjects were surprisingly poor at recalling its spatial location using an eye movement. Additionally, the identification of correct locations was not evenly distributed. Although targets appeared in all locations with equal probability, subjects more likely to be correct when the target appeared in the upper left quadrant. These results suggest that memory for location is poor in certain circumstances and the implications of this, along with further experiments, will be discussed.
Funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council.