Saccadic eye movements impose a natural bottleneck on visual short-term memory.

Abstract

Visual short-term memory (VSTM) is a crucial repository of information when events unfold rapidly before our eyes, yet it maintains only a fraction of the sensory information encoded by the visual system. Here, we tested the hypothesis that saccadic eye movements provide a natural bottleneck for the transition of fragile content in sensory memory to VSTM. In 4 experiments, we show that saccades, planned and executed after the disappearance of a memory array, markedly bias visual memory performance. First, items that had appeared at the saccade target were more readily remembered than items that had appeared elsewhere, even though the saccade was irrelevant to the memory task (Experiment 1). Second, this influence was strongest for saccades elicited right after the disappearance of the memory array and gradually declined over the course of a second (Experiment 2). Third, the saccade stabilized memory representations: The imposed bias persisted even several seconds after saccade execution (Experiment 3). Finally, the advantage for stimuli congruent with the saccade target occurred even when that stimulus was far less likely to be probed in the memory test than any other stimulus in the array, ruling out a strategic effort of observers to memorize information presented at the saccade target (Experiment 4). Together, these results make a strong case that saccades inadvertently determine the content of VSTM, and highlight the key role of actions for the fundamental building blocks of cognition. (PsycINFO Database Record

Separate and combined effects of action relevance and motivational value on visual working memory

“…Both studies included control conditions, in which no movement or a movement to a location that never corresponded to a memory item location (i.e., the fixation dot) had to be executed following the movement cue. These confirmed that the observed differences in performance for potentially action-relevant and action-irrelevant memory items were not the result of an automatic shift of attention induced by the nonpredictive movement cue Ohl & Rolfs, 2017).…”

“…Converging results have been obtained for saccadic eye movements. Using a similar design, Ohl and Rolfs (2017) found that memory for items presented at the goal of a saccade, planned and executed during the retention interval following a movement cue, was better than for items presented at other locations. Both studies included control conditions, in which no movement or a movement to a location that never corresponded to a memory item location (i.e., the fixation dot) had to be executed following the movement cue.…”

“…Thus, actions and action intentions profoundly affect which aspects of our visual environment are most important to us and consequently how we perceive the world around us (e.g., Schütz-Bosbach & Prinz, 2007). A few recent studies have shown that actions continue to modulate visual processing beyond the perceptual stage: Action relevance also imposes priorities on the information that is encoded and maintained in working memory, in that spatial locations (Heuer, Crawford, & Schubö, 2017;Ohl & Rolfs, 2017) as well as feature dimensions are selectively weighted to reflect differences in their importance for an action.…”

The cost of making an eye movement: A direct link between visual working memory and saccade execution

“…Additionally, the authors show that when attention is drawn away from the location of a remembered object by a distractor, participants report memorized items less accurately. Studies that dissociate the location of the saccade target and the location of remembered items showed that saccades away from the location of a memorized item resulted in worse memory performance (Ohl & Rolfs, 2016;Hanning, Jonikaitis, Deubel, & Szinte, 2015). Tas, Luck, & Hollingworth (2016) found that saccades to a secondary object during the retention interval of a visual working memory task, interfered significantly with the proportion of correct answers.…”

Oculomotor Prediction: A Window into the Psychotic Mind

“…As far as we are aware, the potential contributions of CD abnormalities to cognitive dysfunction have not received any attention. However, a recent study in healthy individuals observed enhanced maintenance of information at a future saccade target in working memory, arguably via CD signals [61]. These findings suggest a possible link between CD abnormalities and working memory impairments in schizophrenia and create an avenue for investigating the relationship between CD and cognitive function more broadly.…”