"Eye" Know Where It Goes: An Eye-Tracking Study on Spatial Reconstruction

Authors: Gianna Giordani, Arina Vayshenker, Yana Serjantov, Dylan Norby, Michael Dulas

Field of Study: Integrative Neuroscience

Faculty Mentors: Michael Dulas

Easel: 80

Timeslot: Afternoon

Abstract: Aging is linked to deﬁcits in hippocampal relational memory, which is the ability to bind together and retrieve multiple elements of an experience, including spatial memory. However, little is known about how these impairments interact with visual attention during initial object processing. The present Spatial Reconstruction study used eye-tracking to assess the role of age-related changes in visual attention on item and relational memory. Participants studied arrays of six real-world or abstract stimuli and then were tested on their orientations and spatial locations. Older adults demonstrated impairments in both item speciﬁcity and spatial memory, while both groups performed worse for abstract objects. Eye-tracking revealed that longer viewing times to individual items predicted better performance in younger adults, but less so in older adults. In older adults, transitions between items predicted poorer memory. These data suggest aging weakens the connection between visual attention and relational memory, particularly for abstract information.