Eye Movements and Memory for Objects in Scenes

As we move our eyes from object to object in a scene, what information do we retain from each object we have looked at? And, what effect does the order in which we have looked at those objects have on our memory for them? Research on change blindness, in which changes made to real world or pictorial scenes go unnoticed, even when a person is looking at the scene, has suggested that people remember little of what they see in scenes—otherwise they would surely notice the change(!) However, our research in collaboration with Gregory Zelinsky, of SUNY Stony Brook (Zelinsky & Loschky, 2005), has shown that memory for an object in a scene can last over several intervening fixations on other objects in the scene, suggesting that memory is better than some have suggested base on change blindness studies. Nevertheless, our research has also shown that memory for an object rapidly decreases as you fixate at the first two to three subsequent objects. This recency effect is based on fixation sequence, not simply decay of memory over time. Thus, the change blindness phenomenon my in part be explained by this gradual loss of memory as one looks from object to object in a scene. We propose that a prominent theory for explaining memory for objects in scenes, Object File Theory, must be modified to take into account the rich body of theory and research in the classic memory literature. This research should also be applicable to areas in which it is important to know what information a person attends to and remembers during task performance, for example information displays for airplane cockpits, air traffic control, driving simulators, etc.

Zelinsky, G.J. & Loschky, L.C. (2005). Eye movements serialize memory for objects in scenes. Perception and Psychophysics, 67(4), 676-690.