The eye movement measure of memory and its relationship with explicit measures

This study examined whether the eye movement can be used to measure memory of past events and its relationship with the explicit measures. In Experiment 1, after studying a list of Chinese characters, the participants received a recognition memory test. For each trial the participants had to indicate, among one studied character and two nonstudied homonyms, which character they had studied. Participants' eye movements were monitored while they viewed the three-character test display. Both the time-course and response-locked measures showed that participants viewed the studied character longer than the nonstudied character regardless of their explicit response. Experiment 2 used a wagering task to assess participants' conscious awareness and found that wagering points predicted viewing time for the target better than the recognition accuracy did. These findings suggest that the effect of memory on viewing time occurs automatically and is weakly associated with subsequent conscious awareness of the studied event.