Eye Movement Monitoring Reveals Differential Influences of Emotion on Memory

Abstract

Research shows that memory for emotional aspects of an event may be enhanced at the cost of impaired memory for surrounding peripheral details. However, this has only been assessed directly via verbal reports which reveal the outcome of a long stream of processing but cannot shed light on how/when emotion may affect the retrieval process. In the present experiment, eye movement monitoring (EMM) was used as an indirect measure of memory as it can reveal aspects of online memory processing. For example, do emotions modulate the nature of memory representations or the speed with which such memories can be accessed? Participants viewed central negative and neutral scenes surrounded by three neutral objects and after a brief delay, memory was assessed indirectly via EMM and then directly via verbal reports. Consistent with the previous literature, emotion enhanced central and impaired peripheral memory as indexed by eye movement scanning and verbal reports. This suggests that eye movement scanning may contribute and/or is related to conscious access of memory. However, the central/peripheral tradeoff effect was not observed in an early measure of eye movement behavior, i.e., participants were faster to orient to a critical region of change in the periphery irrespective of whether it was previously studied in a negative or neutral context. These findings demonstrate emotion's differential influences on different aspects of retrieval. In particular, emotion appears to affect the detail within, and/or the evaluation of, stored memory representations, but it may not affect the initial access to those representations.

Holistic Representations of Internal and External Face Features are Used to Support Recognition

“…Although changes were made to the hair of manipulated faces, overt viewing to the hair itself did not distinguish manipulated faces from either novel or repeated faces, nor did overt viewing to the hair distinguish repeated from novel faces. Our previous work has shown that within scenes, viewing is increased to regions where an object has been altered (e.g., Ryan et al, 2000 ; Riggs et al, 2010 ). The fact that altered viewing toward the critical region was not observed in the present study may suggest that participants were nonetheless directing covert attention to the hair, and were able to sufficiently encode information regarding the hair within their peripheral vision such that direct foveation was not required.…”

“…Differences in viewing of repeated versus novel faces can be observed early, and prior to explicit recognition responses (e.g., Althoff and Cohen, 1999 ; Stacey et al, 2005 ; Ryan et al, 2007 ). Moreover, eye movements are sensitive to changes that have occurred to a previously viewed stimulus, early during viewing (Riggs et al, 2010 ), and even in the absence of explicit awareness for what has changed (e.g., Ryan et al, 2000 ; Ryan and Cohen, 2004 ). Consequently, eye movement monitoring was used in the current work to determine the extent to which viewers’ eye movements revealed memory for previously viewed, but manipulated faces, separate from explicit recognition reports.…”

Worth a glance: using eye movements to investigate the cognitive neuroscience of memory

“…Given that eye movement findings reveal the early and obligatory influences of memory in online processing (Hannula et al, 2007 ; Ryan et al, 2007a ; Warren et al, 2010 ), such findings challenge our traditional notions of “perception” and “memory” and suggest that the very nature of perceptual processing is altered as a result of our prior experiences (Hannula et al, 2007 ; Ryan et al, 2007, 2008 ). Furthermore, eye movement methods provide a powerful tool for revealing the influences of memory across cognitive domains (e.g., in language: Rubin et al, 2009 ), and may reveal the influence of other cognitive processes on memory itself (e.g., emotional valence: Riggs et al, in press ).…”

Association with emotional information alters subsequent processing of neutral faces

“…Lastly, this study was limited to the examination of the influence of negative emotions on the immediate processing of subsequent neutral information. It will be important for future work to explore how valence affects processing of neutral information (i.e., positive versus negative), and how emotions may alter long-term memory of neutral information (e.g., Mather and Knight, 2008 ; Guillet and Arndt, 2009 ; Riggs et al, 2010 ; Madan et al, 2012 ; Sakaki et al, 2014 ).…”

“…There are now a number of studies showing that the processing of emotional versus neutral stimuli is characterized by different patterns of eye movement behavior (e.g., Calvo and Lang, 2004 , 2005 ; Nummenmaa et al, 2006 ; Riggs et al, 2010 , 2011 ). However, the manner in which we perceive information is driven not only by stimulus-bound characteristics, but also by prior knowledge (for review see: Hannula et al, 2010 ).…”