This study has developed an original approach to the relationship between eye movements and autobiographical memory, by investigating how maintained fixation could influence the characteristics of retrieved memories. We invited participants to retrieve autobiographical memories in two conditions: while fixating a cross at the centre of a screen and while freely exploring the screen. Memories retrieved during the maintained fixation condition were less detailed and contained less visual imagery than those retrieved during the free-gaze condition. Memories retrieved during the maintained fixation condition were retrieved slower and took less time to describe than those retrieved during the free-gaze condition. As for the characteristics of eye movements, analysis showed fewer and longer fixations as well as fewer saccades in the maintained fixation than in the free-gaze condition. Maintaining fixation is likely to tax cognitive resources that are necessary for the reconstruction of autobiographical memory. Our findings demonstrate how maintained fixation may result in a more effortful construction of autobiographical memory and memories with lower spatiotemporal specificity and poorer mental images.
East Asian and white Western observers employ different eye movement strategies for a variety of visual processing tasks, including face processing. Recent eye tracking studies on face recognition found that East Asians tend to integrate information holistically by focusing on the nose while white Westerners perceive faces featurally by moving between the eyes and mouth. The current study examines the eye movement strategy that Malaysian Chinese participants employ when recognizing East Asian, white Western, and African faces. Rather than adopting the Eastern or Western fixation pattern, Malaysian Chinese participants use a mixed strategy by focusing on the eyes and nose more than the mouth. The combination of Eastern and Western strategies proved advantageous in participants' ability to recognize East Asian and white Western faces, suggesting that individuals learn to use fixation patterns that are optimized for recognizing the faces with which they are more familiar.
Since their rapid introduction into the workplace visual display terminals (VDT's) have been the source of a number of studies aimed at detecting effects on office workers. The published studies have been either short-term or cross-sectional, with one exception. The results have shown varying degrees of relation but by not having a comparable control group all have been limited in their value. We set out to monitor at regular intervals over a 2-year period specific visual functions that have been reported to be affected by VDT usage, and to compare VDT and non-VDT users in the same office environment. By assessing the VDT operators from the time the systems were introduced we have an accurate baseline to work from when assessing change due to the introduction of the VDT.