Eye movement markers of relational encoding predict scene memory precision
- 1Royal Holloway, University of London
Abstract
Recalling scenes and events depends on how information is relationally organised in memory, but it is unclear whether the organisation of eye movements during encoding, rather than simply how much is explored, shapes what is remembered. Using a scene-viewing paradigm and drawing-based free recall task to capture the content and structure of remembered scenes, we examined whether scene memory was better explained by 'lower-order' measures reflecting the magnitude and spatial extent of sampling, or 'higher-order' measures capturing gaze organisation and temporal dynamics. Relative to lower-order measures (number of fixations and scanpath length), memory precision was better predicted by repeated sampling of viewed regions (refixations) and gaze distributions (stationary gaze entropy) during encoding. Thus, the organisation of visual attention, rather than sampling quantity, contributed to scene representations that preserved relationships between elements. These findings highlight a role for spatial gaze dynamics in optimally encoding organised, relational scene representations for episodic memory.
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BibTeX
@misc{alderman2026movement,
title = {{Eye movement markers of relational encoding predict scene memory precision}},
author = {E. Alderman and E. Carre and M. Lisi and S. Durant and C. J. Hodgetts},
howpublished = {bioRxiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.64898/2026.09.30.754408},
url = {https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.09.30.754408v1},
note = {CC BY},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Eye movement markers of relational encoding predict scene memory precision
AU - E. Alderman
AU - E. Carre
AU - M. Lisi
AU - S. Durant
AU - C. J. Hodgetts
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/30
PB - bioRxiv
DO - 10.64898/2026.09.30.754408
UR - https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.09.30.754408v1
AB - Recalling scenes and events depends on how information is relationally organised in memory, but it is unclear whether the organisation of eye movements during encoding, rather than simply how much is explored, shapes what is remembered. Using a scene-viewing paradigm and drawing-based free recall task to capture the content and structure of remembered scenes, we examined whether scene memory was better explained by 'lower-order' measures reflecting the magnitude and spatial extent of sampling, or 'higher-order' measures capturing gaze organisation and temporal dynamics. Relative to lower-order measures (number of fixations and scanpath length), memory precision was better predicted by repeated sampling of viewed regions (refixations) and gaze distributions (stationary gaze entropy) during encoding. Thus, the organisation of visual attention, rather than sampling quantity, contributed to scene representations that preserved relationships between elements. These findings highlight a role for spatial gaze dynamics in optimally encoding organised, relational scene representations for episodic memory.
ER -