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Pupil Old/New Effect Is Modulated by Task Instruction-Evidence for an Attentional Saliency Account
Ádám Albi1, Péter Pajkossy1,2
1Department of Cognitive Science, Faculty of Natural Sciences, Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Budapest, Hungary.
The European Journal of Neuroscience
|December 6, 2025
Summary
Pupil dilation increases when recognizing familiar items, indicating an attentional orienting response. Task relevance influences this pupil old/new effect, especially for strongly encoded memories.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Neuroscience
- Psychology
Background:
- The pupil old/new effect, where pupil dilation is greater for recognized items, is often linked to attentional orienting.
- Task relevance is known to influence orienting responses, but its role in the pupil old/new effect is not fully understood.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate whether task instructions modulate the pupil old/new effect.
- To determine if task relevance influences attentional orienting towards mnemonic information.
Main Methods:
- Two experiments were conducted where participants performed nonmnemonic (animate/inanimate categorization) and mnemonic (old/new recognition) tasks.
- Pupil dilation was measured during item presentation under different encoding strengths and task conditions.
Main Results:
- The pupil old/new effect was observed in the nonmnemonic task for strongly encoded items, suggesting automatic activation.
- The effect was less consistent for weakly encoded items and more pronounced in the mnemonic task when stimuli were not overlearned.
- Results indicate that strong memory representations can automatically trigger pupil dilation.
Conclusions:
- The pupil old/new effect reflects an attentional orienting response to activated mnemonic information.
- Task relevance modulates this effect, highlighting the interplay between memory, attention, and task demands.
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