Effects of eye movements on the rate of discovery and the vividness of visual images

Eye fixation and spatial organization in imagery

“…The evidence of a relati onship between eye movement s and imagery obtained in the present experiment does not suppo rt the findings of some prior studies (Bower, 1972 ;Hale & Simpson , 1970) . Both of these studies involved images which contained only two element s to be organized int o a relati onship, and so, in spatial term s at least, the organization in these images was simple.…”

“…Bower (1972) found no difference in recall performance when Ss were instructed to generate images linking paired associates under conditions which either permitted eye movement or not. In a similar experiment, Hale and Simpson (1970) found no differences in subjective ratings of the time to construct an image and the vividness of an image. A study comparing eye fixation rates during a variety of visual imagery tasks found that ocular activity did not exceed baseline levels for any of the tasks (Marks, 1972).…”

Visual imagery differences and eye movements in the recall of pictures

“…Hale and Simpson (1970) obtained vividness ratings under three conditions in which the Ss were encouraged to move their eyes, the eye movements were imagined, and the eyes were kept still. No difference in vividness occurred between these conditions.…”

Eye-movement reinstatement and neural reactivation during mental imagery

“…Research into the relationship between fixation reinstatement and memory acuity has been mixed (Hale and Simpson, 1971;Richardson and Spivey, 2000;Spivey and Geng, 2001;Laeng and Teodorescu, 2002;Johansson et al 2012;Laeng at al., 2014). For example, when fixations were constrained to a region that either did or did not correspond to the previous location of objects to be recalled, Johansson and Johansson (2014) found that memory performance was superior in the "corresponding" condition, whereas Martarelli and Mast (2013) did not.…”