The eyes as pointers to serial memory

记忆是人类认知的重要组成部分，目前的研究越来越认识到眼动在记忆过程中所起的重要作用。在不断变化的视觉环境中保留相关对象的位置信息是许多复杂的日常任务的基础。例如，在驾驶时，重要的是能够保留和检索关于外部和内部环境的相关特征的信息。这可能包括物体、建筑物和人的一般位置、交通的速度和位置、地点标志上的信息、汽车内显示器上的控制和信息。这个项目将解决的问题是，眼球运动的控制和分布是否反映了任务相关信息的视觉编码之外的心理过程（心眼假说），以及眼睛的处置，即使在一个项目已经从视图中消失后，是否可以用来预测该项目所在的空间是被记住还是被遗忘。它将阐明长期存在的基本问题，即视觉空间短期记忆（STM）的容量限制的性质和遗忘的来源，无论是记忆的衰退还是后续事件的干扰。该项目将使用创新的眼动追踪技术，结合表现测量，将眼睛的运动映射到记忆的关键认知成分。结果将通知STM的性质，它的局限性，以及从视觉空间记忆遗忘的来源的辩论。它们将对建立记忆的正式、计算或数学模型的努力施加重要的限制。一个理论上的贡献将是建立是否记忆有一个固定的容量限制，或在这个意义上，资源可以被战略性地分配在要记住的项目和任务是灵活的。另一个主要的贡献将是确定是否衰减的痕迹（记忆痕迹）或后续活动的干扰是最重要的来源遗忘与视觉空间记忆。然而，第三个理论贡献将是测试STM的经典模块化和基于对象的观点的替代方案，考虑记忆是否可以通过刺激的感知和计划来理解。第四个结果将是概念上相似的过程，如“手势”排练，（在言语记忆中以发音排练的形式建立良好），在不同的感觉模态之间并行操作（例如，愿景）。

Memory is a critical component of human cognition and current research is increasingly recognizing the vital role played by eye-movements in the memory process. Retaining information about where pertinent objects are in a changing visual environment underpins numerous complex everyday tasks. For example, while driving it is important to be able to retain and retrieve information about relevant features about the external and internal environment. This may include the general position of objects, buildings and people, the speed and position of traffic, information on place signs, the controls and information on displays within a car. This project will address the question of whether the control and distribution of eye movements reflects mental processes beyond the visual encoding of task-relevant information (the mind-eye hypothesis) and whether the disposition of the eyes, even after an item has disappeared from view, can be used to predict whether the space in which the item was present is remembered or forgotten. It will shed light on long-standing and fundamental questions about the nature of capacity-limits in visuo-spatial short-term memory (STM) and the sources of forgetting, whether by decay of the memory or interference from subsequent events. The project will use innovative eye-tracking techniques, combined with performance measures, to map the movement of the eyes to key cognitive components of memory. Results will inform the debate on the nature of STM, its limitations, and the sources of forgetting from visuo-spatial memory. They will impose important constraints on efforts to produce formal, computational or mathematical, models of memory. One theoretical contribution will be to establish whether memory has a fixed capacity limit or is flexible in the sense that resources can be allocated strategically across to-be-remembered items and tasks. Another major contribution will be to determine whether decay of the engram (memory trace) or interference from subsequent activity is the most important source of forgetting with visuo-spatial memory. Yet a third theoretical contribution will be to test an alternative to the classic modular and object-based views of STM by considering whether memory can, alternatively, be understood through the perception of stimuli and the planning of (oculomotor) actions and a fourth outcome will be an indication of the extent to which conceptually similar processes, such as "gestural" rehearsal (well-established within verbal memory, in the form of articulatory rehearsal), operate in parallel across different sensory modalities (e.g., vision).