Abstract
Previous studies show that eye movement trajectory curves away from a remembered visual location if a saccade needs to be made in the same direction as the location. Data suggest that part of the process of maintaining the location in working memory is the mental simulation of that location, so that the oculomotor system treats the remembered location as a real one. Other research suggests that word meaning may also behave like a ‘real object’ in space. The current study aimed to combine the two streams of research examining the effect of word meaning on the memory of a dot location. The results of two experiments showed that word meaning for ‘up’ (but not ‘down’) modulated both eye movement trajectory and location recognition time. Thus, mental simulation of task-irrelevant space-related word meaning affected both earlier stages of memory processes (maintenance of the location in the working memory) and later ones (location recognition).
References
Dudschig C, Souman J, Lachmair M, de la Vega I, Kaup B (2013) Reading “sun” and looking up: the influence of language on saccadic eye movements in the vertical dimension. PLoS One 8(2):e56872
Khalid S, Ansorge U (2013) The simon effect of spatial words in eye movements: comparison of vertical and horizontal effects and of eye and finger responses. Vis Res 86:6–14
Pecher D, Van Dantzig S, Boot I, Zanolie K, Huber DE (2010) Congruency between word position and meaning is caused by task-induced spatial attention. Front Psychol 1:30
Schneider W, Eschman A, Zuccolotto A (2002) E-Prime reference guide. Psychology Software Tools Incorporated, Pittsburgh
Theeuwes J, Olivers CN, Chizk CL (2005) Remembering a location makes the eyes curve away. Psychol Sci 16(3):196–199
Thomas NA, Elias LJ (2011) Upper and lower visual field differences in perceptual asymmetries. Brain Res 1387:108–115
Van der Stigchel S, Meeter M, Theeuwes J (2006) Eye movement trajectories and what they tell us. Neurosci Biobehav Rev 30(5):666–679
Acknowledgments
We thank an anonymous reviewer for useful comments and suggestions. This research was partially supported by Tomsk State University Academic D.I. Mendeleev Fund Program, Grant No. 8.1.37.2015.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Janyan, A., Vankov, I., Tsaregorodtseva, O. et al. Remember down, look down, read up: Does a word modulate eye trajectory away from remembered location?. Cogn Process 16 (Suppl 1), 259–263 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10339-015-0718-5
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10339-015-0718-5