Affiliations 

  • 1 Faculté de Psychologie, Laboratoire de Psychologie Des Pays de La Loire (LPPL - EA 4638), Université de Nantes, Chemin de La Censive du Tertre, Univ Angers, BP 81227, 44312, Nantes, France. mohamad.elhaj@univ-nantes.fr
  • 2 Department of Neurology, Centre Mémoire de Ressources Et Recherche, CHU Nantes, Inserm CIC04, Nantes, France
  • 3 University of Nottingham-Malaysia Campus, Semenyih, Malaysia
Psychol Res, 2021 Sep;85(6):2466-2473.
PMID: 32862309 DOI: 10.1007/s00426-020-01403-3

Abstract

There is an increased interest in the study of eye movements during the retrieval of autobiographical memories. Following this trend, the aim of the current study was to evaluate eye movements during the retrieval of remote and recent autobiographical memories. We instructed 71 participants to retrieve memories of personal events from early childhood (6-10 years), late childhood/early adolescence (11-14 years), late adolescence (15-18 years), and the last month. During the retrieval of these memories, participants wore eye-tracking glasses. Analyses showed that early childhood memories triggered fewer fixations and fixations with longer durations than memories from the last month. However, no significant differences were observed for the number of saccades, saccade durations, or total amplitude of the saccades. The fewer and longer lasting fixations during the retrieval of early childhood memories can be attributed either to the visual system reconstructing remote memories from an observer perspective or to difficulties when reconstructing remote memories.

* Title and MeSH Headings from MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine.