Department of Psychology, University of York, York, YO10 5DD, UK.
Mem Cognit. 2011 Oct;39(7):1253-63. doi: 10.3758/s13421-011-0098-8.
Closing the eyes helps memory. We investigated the mechanisms underlying the eyeclosure effect by exposing 80 eyewitnesses to different types of distraction during the witness interview: blank screen (control), eyes closed, visual distraction, and auditory distraction. We examined the cognitive load hypothesis by comparing any type of distraction (visual or auditory) with minimal distraction (blank screen or eyes closed). We found recall to be significantly better when distraction was minimal, providing evidence that eyeclosure reduces cognitive load. We examined the modality-specific interference hypothesis by comparing the effects of visual and auditory distraction on recall of visual and auditory information. Visual and auditory distraction selectively impaired memory for information presented in the same modality, supporting the role of visualisation in the eyeclosure effect. Analysis of recall in terms of grain size revealed that recall of basic information about the event was robust, whereas recall of specific details was prone to both general and modality-specific disruptions.
闭眼有助于记忆。我们通过在证人访谈期间让 80 名目击者受到不同类型的分心来研究闭眼效应的机制：空白屏幕（对照）、闭眼、视觉分心和听觉分心。我们通过将任何类型的分心（视觉或听觉）与最小分心（空白屏幕或闭眼）进行比较，来检验认知负荷假说。我们发现，当分心最小时，回忆效果明显更好，这表明闭眼可以降低认知负荷。我们通过比较视觉和听觉分心对视觉和听觉信息的回忆效果，来检验模态特异性干扰假说。视觉和听觉分心选择性地损害了同一模态呈现的信息的记忆，支持了可视化在闭眼效应中的作用。根据粒度大小对回忆进行分析表明，关于事件的基本信息的回忆是稳健的，而特定细节的回忆容易受到一般和模态特异性干扰的影响。
