Pupillometry tracks fluctuations in working memory performance

Robison, Matthew K.; Unsworth, Nash

doi:10.31234/osf.io/5a7ck

Cited by 9 publications

(22 citation statements)

References 32 publications

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“…The cognitive task we have chosen is a visual STM task [ 58 ]. There are several reasons for this selection: First, previous research suggests successful change detection, a measure of visual STM fidelity, may be influenced by attention in infants [ 15 ] and adults [ 59 , 60 ], even in the absence of overt orienting responses. Second, whereas our attention task was designed to elicit rapid and reflexive orienting responses, our visual STM task was not.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evidence for Attentional Phenotypes in Infancy and Their Role in Visual Cognitive Performance

2020

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Infant visual attention rapidly develops during the first year of life, playing a pivotal role in the way infants process, learn, and respond to their visual world. It is possible that individual differences in eye movement patterns shape early experience and thus subsequent cognitive development. If this is the case, then it may be possible to identify sub-optimal attentional behaviors in infancy, before the emergence of cognitive deficit. In Experiment 1, a latent profile analysis was conducted on scores derived from the Infant Orienting with Attention (IOWA) task, a cued-attention task that measures individual differences in spatial attention and orienting proficiency. This analysis identified three profiles that varied substantially in terms of attentional efficiency. The largest of these profiles (“high flexible”, 55%) demonstrated functionally optimal patterns of attentional functioning with relatively rapid, selective, and adaptive orienting responses. The next largest group (“low reactive”, 39.6%) demonstrated low attentional sensitivity with slow, insensitive orienting responses. The smallest group (“high reactive”, 5.4%) demonstrated attentional over-sensitivity, with rapid, unselective and inaccurate orienting responses. A linear mixed effect model and growth curve analysis conducted on 5- to 11-month-old eye tracking data revealed significant stable differences in growth trajectory for each phenotype group. Results from Experiment 2 demonstrated the ability of attentional phenotypes to explain individual differences in general cognitive functioning, revealing significant between-phenotype group differences in performance on a visual short-term memory task. Taken together, results presented here demonstrate that attentional phenotypes are present early in life and predict unique patterns of growth from 5 to 11 months, and may be useful in understanding the origin of individual differences in general visuo-cognitive functioning.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evidence for Attentional Phenotypes in Infancy and Their Role in Visual Cognitive Performance

2020

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“…Based on prior work, we predicted that variability in arousal would negatively correlate with recall performance (Madore et al, 2020;Robison & Brewer, 2020;Robison & Unsworth, 2019;Unsworth & Robison, 2015, 2017b, and that intensity of attention would positively correlate with recall performance (Miller et al, 2019;Miller & Unsworth, 2020, 2021. Both hypotheses were supported by the data.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 62%

“…But recently, it has become evident that pupil diameter can be used as a proxy for LC activity (Aston-Jones & Cohen, 2005;Joshi & Gold, 2020;Joshi, Li, Kalwani, & Gold, 2016;Varazzani, San-Galli, Gilardeau, & Bouret, 2015). Consistent with this notion, several recent studies have measured arousal regulation by measuring variability in pupil diameter and found relations among arousal regulation, long-term memory, attention control, sustained attention, working memory capacity, self-reported instances of mind-wandering and distraction, and self-reported media multitasking (Aminihajibashi et al, 2020;Aminihajibashi, Hagen, Foldal, Laeng, & Espeseth, 2019;Madore et al, 2020;Robison & Brewer, 2020, 2021Robison & Unsworth, 2019). Therefore, it appears that arousal regulation is a task-and domain-general individual difference that can impact a host of cognitive performance measures.…”

Section: Pupillary Correlates Of Individual Differences In Long-term Memorymentioning

confidence: 90%

“…Here we leverage pupillometry to investigate these two additional potential sources of interindividual variation in long-term memory: intensity of attention and arousal (dys)regulation Kahneman and Beatty (1966) were the first to demonstrate that pupil diameter was sensitive to the outlay of effort toward encoding and retrieving information in memory. A host of subsequent studies have also found that the pupil dilates in response to the encoding of information, either for maintenance in working memory (Alnaes et al, 2014;Aminihajibashi, Hagen, Andreassen, Laeng, & Espeseth, 2020;Heitz, Schrock, Payne, & Engle, 2008;Kursawe & Zimmer, 2015;Meghanathan, Leeuwen, & Nikolaev, 2015;Robison & Unsworth, 2019;Siegle, Steinhauer, Stenger, Konecky, & Carter, 2003;Unsworth & Robison, 2015 or later retrieval from long-term memory (Ariel & Castel, 2014;Gross & Dobbins, 2021;Kahneman & Peavler, 1969;Miller et al, 2019;Miller & Unsworth, 2020, 2021Papesh, Goldinger, & Hout, 2012;Peavler, 1974;. At the level of individual differences, Miller et al (2019) found a positive correlation between evoked pupillary responses during encoding and performance on delayed free recall.…”

Section: Pupillary Correlates Of Individual Differences In Long-term Memorymentioning

confidence: 95%

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Pupillary correlates of individual differences in long-term memory

Robison¹,

Trost²,

Schor

et al. 2021

Preprint

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The present study is the first to examine individual differences in long-term memory, arousal dysregulation, and intensity of attention within the same experiment. Participants (N = 106) completed 28 lists of an immediate free recall task while their pupil diameter was recorded via an eye-tracker during the encoding period. Two main pupillary measures were extracted: intraindividual variability in pre-list pupil diameter and evoked pupillary responses during item encoding. Variability in pre-list pupil diameter served as a measure of arousal dysregulation, and evoked pupillary responses served as a measure of intensity of attention. Based on prior work, we hypothesized that there would be a positive association between intensity of attention and recall ability, and that there would be a negative association between arousal dysregulation and recall ability. Collectively these two measures accounted for 19% of interindividual variance in recall, with 5% attributable uniquely to intensity of attention and 12% attributable uniquely to arousal regulation. The findings demonstrate that there are sources of individual differences in long-term memory that can be revealed via pupillometry, notably the amount of effort deployed during item encoding and the degree to which people exhibit dysregulated arousal. Both findings are consistent with recent theorizing regarding the role of the locus coeruleus-norepinephrine (LC-NE) system’s role in goal-directed cognition. Specifically, the LC governs both moment-to-moment arousal and NE release to cortical regions subserving cognitive processing. Among people for whom this system operates most optimally, long-term memory retention is superior.

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“…Although much previous work has demonstrated the link between attention and VSTM encoding (e.g., Adam, Mance, Fukuda, & Vogel, 2015;Giesbrecht, Weissman, Woldorff, & Mangun, 2006;Murray, Nobre, & Stokes, 2011;Myers, Stokes, Walther, & Nobre, 2014;Robison & Unsworth, 2019), more recent work has demonstrated that performance of VSTM and visual attention tasks is characterized by synchronous fluctuations over time (Balestrieri, Ronconi, & Melcher, 2019;deBettencourt, Keene, Awh, & Vogel, 2019). These findings are taken to support the idea that attentional resources are shared between perceptual representations of visual information and visual information maintained in VSTM (Adam & deBettencourt, 2019).…”

Section: Vstm and Attentionmentioning

confidence: 89%

Effects of visual short-term memory load and attentional demand on the contrast response function

Konstantinou

Lavie

2020

Journal of Vision

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Visual short-term memory (VSTM) load leads to impaired perception during maintenance. Here, we fitted the contrast response function to psychometric orientation discrimination data while also varying attention demand during maintenance to investigate: (1) whether VSTM load effects on perception are mediated by a modulation of the contrast threshold, consistent with contrast gain accounts, or by the function asymptote (1 lapse rate), consistent with response gain accounts; and (2) whether the VSTM load effects on the contrast response function depend on the availability of attentional resources. We manipulated VSTM load via the number of items in the memory set in a color and location VSTM task and assessed the contrast response function for an orientation discrimination task during maintenance. Attention demand was varied through spatial cuing of the orientation stimulus. Higher VSTM load increased the estimated contrast threshold of the contrast response function without affecting the estimated asymptote, but only when the discrimination task demanded attention. When attentional demand was reduced (in the cued conditions), the VSTM load effects on the contrast threshold were eliminated. The results suggest that VSTM load reduces perceptual sensitivity by increasing contrast thresholds, suggestive of a contrast gain modulation mechanism, as long as the perceptual discrimination task demands attention. These findings support recent claims that attentional resources are shared between perception and VSTM maintenance processes.

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Pupillometry tracks fluctuations in working memory performance

Cited by 9 publications

References 32 publications

Evidence for Attentional Phenotypes in Infancy and Their Role in Visual Cognitive Performance

Evidence for Attentional Phenotypes in Infancy and Their Role in Visual Cognitive Performance

Pupillary correlates of individual differences in long-term memory

Effects of visual short-term memory load and attentional demand on the contrast response function

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