Pupil dilation during recognition memory: Isolating unexpected recognition from judgment uncertainty

Abstract

Optimally discriminating familiar from novel stimuli demands a decision-making process informed by prior expectations. Here we demonstrate that pupillary dilation (PD) responses during recognition memory decisions are modulated by expectations, and more specifically, that pupil dilation increases for unexpected compared to expected recognition. Furthermore, multi-level modeling demonstrated that the time course of the dilation during each individual trial contains separable early and late dilation components, with the early amplitude capturing unexpected recognition, and the later trailing slope reflecting general judgment uncertainty or effort. This is the first demonstration that the early dilation response during recognition is dependent upon observer expectations and that separate recognition expectation and judgment uncertainty components are present in the dilation time course of every trial. The findings provide novel insights into adaptive memory-linked orienting mechanisms as well as the general cognitive underpinnings of the pupillary index of autonomic nervous system activity.

Montefinese M, Vinson D, Ambrosini E. Pupil response to false memory modulated by feature similarity (PrePrint)

“…Our results might also be explained by relying on an alternative explanation of the PON effect, which questioned the voluntary component of the cognitive load account. According to this study (Mill, O'Connor, & Dobbins, 2016), the pupil old/new effect would reflect involuntary orienting triggered by unexpected information, depending on the degree this information is unexpected. This idea is in agreement with fMRI studies assuming a role for right-lateralized bottom-up attention processes in the processing of unexpected memorial content (Cabeza, Ciaramelli, Olson, & Moscovitch, 2008;O'Connor, Han, & Dobbins, 2010) and a role of the pupillary dilation in response to the surprise value of diagnostic information in decision-making (Preuschoff, 't Hart, & Einhäuser, 2011).…”

Prediction in infants and adults: A pupillometry study

“…We examined the PDR of present versus omission trials for both age groups using two‐tailed t tests across successive time points and corrected for multiple comparison using a conservative method (the Benjamini & Hochberg, ; procedure controlled for the rate of false discovery; Lavin et al., ; Mill et al., ). We used multiple t tests to analyze the time‐course because we wanted to compare every single time point to identify where the prediction error signal starts and ends.…”

“…For similar exclusion rate see Fawcett, Wesevich, and Gredebäck (). We calculated the PDR as percentage change from baseline to accommodate variations in pupil diameter due to individual differences, which is a standard approach for pupillometry data (Lavin, San Martín, & Rosales Jubal, ; Mill, O'Connor, & Dobbins, ; Preuschoff, Marius't Hart, & Einhäuser, ). We defined baseline as the average pupil diameter during the period after the predicting sound was played and before the visual stimulus appeared, which was 1,000 ms (Figure ).…”

The locus coeruleus–norepinephrine system as pacemaker of attention – a developmental mechanism of derailed attentional function in autism spectrum disorder

“…() assessed the ANT in healthy adults and were able to dissociate different attentional functions within the PD time course: Early peak dilation around 200–400 ms was associated with phasic alerting, subsequent slope around 400–600 ms was associated with orienting, and late peak dilation after 1200 ms was associated with attentional control. This was complemented by another study on healthy adults (Mill et al ., ): An early PD component within the first hundreds of milliseconds after stimulus onset varied by stimulus novelty and thus was associated with phasic alerting. This early alerting component was separated from a subsequent, more pronounced PD peak reflecting attentional control.…”