When you look at your past: Eye movement during autobiographical retrieval

In the Eyes of the Future: Eye Movement during Near and Distant Future Thinking

“…Besides being associated with the complexity of visual representation, the long fixations during near future thinking can be associated with the first-person perspective. As demonstrated in our study, most near future events triggered a “field” mental visual perspective, replicating previous research on the prevalence of this perspective during near future thinking [ 10 , 11 , 12 ]. The “field” perspective can be associated with the vividness of the visual representation of near future events.…”

“…Results demonstrated that near future events triggered more field perspective responses compared to distant events. Similar results were reported by Macrae et al [ 11 ], who investigated whether perceivers use a different mental perspective when imagining their selves in the near and distant future. Results demonstrated that, whereas near future self-images were dominated by a first-person perspective, distant self-images were dominated by a third-person perspective.…”

“…While our study demonstrates that near future thinking triggers both long fixations and "field" responses, we provide no evidence that the eye movement activities during future thinking (i.e., the few and long fixations during near future thinking, or even the non-significant differences between near and distant future thinking in terms of saccades) are the result or origin of mental visual processing. As mentioned in the introduction here (see above), eye movement in general has been considered an index of visual imagery during memory retrieval [15,16,36,37]. Research has also attributed eye movement during future thinking to the attempt by the visual system to find (through saccades) and activate (through fixations) stored mental representations [14].…”

“…To summarize, while previous research has investigated eye movement during future thinking [ 14 ], this prior research did not investigate the temporal distance (i.e., near vs. distant) nor the visual perspective (i.e., first- vs. third-person perspective) of these events. This comparison is worth consideration because research has consistently demonstrated that construction of near and distant events involves distinct mental visual perspectives [ 10 , 11 , 12 ]. Building on this prior research, we investigated whether the first-person perspective, as may be expected for near future thinking, may be accompanied by distinct eye movement pattern (e.g., long fixations).…”