The impact of aging and repetition on eye movements and recognition memory

Mazloum-Farzaghi, Negar; Shing, Nathanael; Mendoza, Leanne; Barense, Morgan D.; Ryan, Jennifer D.; Olsen, Rosanna K.

doi:10.1080/13825585.2022.2039587

Cited by 3 publications

(2 citation statements)

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“…In contrast to measurements of pupil size, measuring reductions in eye movements may be less affected by age-related changes (Bruenech, 2018; Sharpe & Sylvester, 1978; Spooner, Sakala, & Baloh, 1980; Zackon & Sharpe, 1987) as the dynamics related to executing eye movements appear little affected by aging (Abrams, Pratt, & Chasteen, 1998). Further, older adults tend to make more eye movements than younger adults (Liu, Shen, Olsen, & Ryan, 2018; Mazloum-Farzaghi et al, 2022; Ryan, Leung, Turk-Browne, & Hasher, 2007), which may facilitate sensitivity to eye-movement reductions related to effort. Therefore, in the current study, measures of pupil size and the spatial extent of eye movement exploration (i.e., gaze dispersion) were contrasted for the full effort profile in three listening experiments for younger and older adults.…”

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confidence: 99%

Pupil size and eye movements differently index effort in both younger and older adults

Herrmann,

Ryan

2024

Preprint

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The assessment of mental effort is increasingly relevant in neuro-cognitive and lifespan domains. Pupillometry - the measure of the pupil size - is often used to assess effort but has disadvantages. Analysis of eye movements may provide an alternative, but research has been limited to easy and difficult task demands in younger adults. An effort measure must be sensitive to the whole effort profile, including 'giving-up' effort investment, and capture effort in different age groups. The current study comprised three experiments in which younger and older adults (both sexes) listened to speech masked by background babble at different signal-to-noise ratios associated with easy, difficult, and impossible speech comprehension. We expected individuals to invest little effort for easy and impossible speech ('giving up') but to exert effort for difficult speech. Indeed, pupil size was largest for difficult, but lower for the easy and impossible speech conditions. In contrast, gaze dispersion decreased with increasing speech masking in both age groups. Critically, gaze dispersion during difficult speech returned to levels similar to easy speech after sentence offset, where acoustic stimulation was similar across conditions, whereas gaze dispersion during impossible speech continued to be reduced. These findings show that a reduction in eye movements is not a byproduct of acoustic factors, but instead suggest that neuro-cognitive processes, different from arousal-related systems regulating the pupil size, drive reduced eye movements during high task demands. The current data thus show that effort in one sensory domain (audition) differentially impacts distinct functional properties in another sensory domain (vision).

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Pupil size and eye movements differently index effort in both younger and older adults

Herrmann,

Ryan

2024

Preprint

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“…Evidence for this notion comes from findings of altered viewing patterns in individuals with organic amnesia, which reveal a causal influence of memory on eye movements (Lucas et al, 2019; Olsen et al, 2016). The typical aging process is also accompanied by changes to visual exploration, and these changes are associated with a reduction in the quality and amount of information encoded into memory (e.g., Açik et al, 2010; Kamp et al, 2018; Kamp & Zimmer, 2015; Liu et al, 2018; Mazloum-Farzaghi et al, 2022; Wynn et al, 2021). A final goal of Experiment 1 was to extend this prior work by examining whether scanpath entropy and/or transition frequency could be predicted by individual differences in domain-general declarative memory ability (MA) assessed independently of spatial reconstruction performance.…”

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Dynamic interactions between memory and viewing behaviors: Insights from dyadic modeling of eye movements.

Lucas¹,

Daugherty²,

McAuley³

et al. 2023

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Perfor

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Humans use eye movements to build visual memories. We investigated how the contributions of specific viewing behaviors to memory formation evolve over individual study epochs. We used dyadic modeling to explain performance on a spatial reconstruction task based on interactions among two gaze measures: (a) the entropy of the scanpath and (b) the frequency of item-to-item gaze transitions. To measure these interactions, our hypothesized model included causal pathways by which early-trial viewing behaviors impacted subsequent memory via downstream effects on later viewing. We found that lower scanpath entropy throughout the trial predicted better memory performance. By contrast, the effect of item-toitem transition frequency changed from negative to positive as the trial progressed. The model also revealed multiple pathways by which early-trial viewing dynamically altered late-trial viewing, thereby impacting memory indirectly. Finally, individual differences in scores on an independent measure of memory ability were found to predict viewing effectiveness, and viewing behaviors partially mediated the relation between memory ability and reconstruction accuracy. In a second experiment, the model showed a good fit for an independent dataset. These results highlight the dynamic nature of memory formation and suggest that the order in which eye movements occur can critically determine their effectiveness. Public Significance StatementThe present study suggests that, when people attempt to commit complex visual information to memory, their success depends not only on how much time was spent viewing the information, but also on the order in which different parts of the information were selected for viewing. Additionally, it provides evidence that people with poorer memories in general also tend to use eye movements less effectively during memory tasks. Understanding eye movement dynamics is critical to understand when and why memory formation is successful.

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Pupil Size and Eye Movements Differently Index Effort in Both Younger and Older Adults

Herrmann,

Ryan

2024

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience

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The assessment of mental effort is increasingly relevant in neurocognitive and life span domains. Pupillometry, the measure of the pupil size, is often used to assess effort but has disadvantages. Analysis of eye movements may provide an alternative, but research has been limited to easy and difficult task demands in younger adults. An effort measure must be sensitive to the whole effort profile, including “giving up” effort investment, and capture effort in different age groups. The current study comprised three experiments in which younger (n = 66) and older (n = 44) adults listened to speech masked by background babble at different signal-to-noise ratios associated with easy, difficult, and impossible speech comprehension. We expected individuals to invest little effort for easy and impossible speech (giving up) but to exert effort for difficult speech. Indeed, pupil size was largest for difficult but lower for easy and impossible speech. In contrast, gaze dispersion decreased with increasing speech masking in both age groups. Critically, gaze dispersion during difficult speech returned to levels similar to easy speech after sentence offset, when acoustic stimulation was similar across conditions, whereas gaze dispersion during impossible speech continued to be reduced. These findings show that a reduction in eye movements is not a byproduct of acoustic factors, but instead suggest that neurocognitive processes, different from arousal-related systems regulating the pupil size, drive reduced eye movements during high task demands. The current data thus show that effort in one sensory domain (audition) differentially impacts distinct functional properties in another sensory domain (vision).

show abstract

The impact of aging and repetition on eye movements and recognition memory

Cited by 3 publications

References 58 publications

Pupil size and eye movements differently index effort in both younger and older adults

Pupil size and eye movements differently index effort in both younger and older adults

Dynamic interactions between memory and viewing behaviors: Insights from dyadic modeling of eye movements.

Pupil Size and Eye Movements Differently Index Effort in Both Younger and Older Adults

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