Using space to represent categories: insights from gaze position

• Published in: Psychological research Vol. 81; no. 4; pp. 721 - 729
• Main Authors: Martarelli, Corinna S., Chiquet, Sandra, Laeng, Bruno, Mast, Fred W.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Berlin/Heidelberg Springer Berlin Heidelberg 01.07.2017; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Behavioral Science and Psychology; Boundaries; Eye; Fixation, Ocular - physiology; Humans; Original Article; Psychology; Psychology Research; Space Perception - physiology; Visual perception; Visual Perception - physiology; Mental Imagery; Image Generation; Recognition Task; Mental Image; Recall Phase
• ISSN: 0340-0727; 1430-2772
• DOI: 10.1007/s00426-016-0781-2

We investigated the boundaries among imagery, memory, and perception by measuring gaze during retrieved versus imagined visual information. Eye fixations during recall were bound to the location at which a specific stimulus was encoded. However, eye position information generalized to novel objects of the same category that had not been seen before. For example, encoding an image of a dog in a specific location enhanced the likelihood of looking at the same location during subsequent mental imagery of other mammals. The results suggest that eye movements can also be launched by abstract representations of categories and not exclusively by a single episode or a specific visual exemplar.