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Spatial But Not Oculomotor Information Biases Perceptual Memory: Evidence From Face Perception and Cognitive Modeling
Author(s) -
Wantz Andrea L.,
Lobmaier Janek S.,
Mast Fred W.,
Senn Walter
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
cognitive science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.498
H-Index - 114
eISSN - 1551-6709
pISSN - 0364-0213
DOI - 10.1111/cogs.12437
Subject(s) - saccade , perception , recall , cognitive psychology , psychology , eye movement , cognition , face (sociological concept) , face perception , spatial memory , spatial cognition , spatial analysis , computer science , working memory , neuroscience , geography , social science , sociology , remote sensing
Recent research put forward the hypothesis that eye movements are integrated in memory representations and are reactivated when later recalled. However, “looking back to nothing” during recall might be a consequence of spatial memory retrieval. Here, we aimed at distinguishing between the effect of spatial and oculomotor information on perceptual memory. Participants’ task was to judge whether a morph looked rather like the first or second previously presented face. Crucially, faces and morphs were presented in a way that the morph reactivated oculomotor and/or spatial information associated with one of the previously encoded faces. Perceptual face memory was largely influenced by these manipulations. We considered a simple computational model with an excellent match (4.3% error) that expresses these biases as a linear combination of recency, saccade, and location. Surprisingly, saccades did not play a role. The results suggest that spatial and temporal rather than oculomotor information biases perceptual face memory.