Department of Psychology, Brigham Young University, 1062 SWKT, Provo, UT, 84602-5543, USA.
Mem Cognit. 2018 Jul;46(5):826-839. doi: 10.3758/s13421-018-0798-4.
Individual differences in working memory (WM) and executive control are stable, related to cognitive task performance, and clinically predictive. Between-participant differences in eye movements are also highly reliable (Carter & Luke, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 2018; Henderson & Luke, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 40(4), 1390-1400, 2014). However, little is known about how higher order individual differences in cognition are related to these eye-movement characteristics. In the present study, healthy college-age participants performed several individual difference tasks to measure WM span and executive control. Participants also performed three eye-movement tasks: reading, visual search, and scene viewing. Across all tasks, higher WM scores were related to reduced skewness in fixation duration distributions. In reading, higher WM scores predicted longer saccades. In scene viewing, higher WM scores predicted longer fixations. Theoretical and clinical implications of these findings are discussed.
个体在工作记忆（WM）和执行控制方面的差异是稳定的，与认知任务表现相关，并具有临床预测性。眼动的个体间差异也具有高度可靠性（Carter & Luke，《实验心理学杂志：人类感知与表现》，2018 年；Henderson & Luke，《实验心理学杂志：人类感知与表现》，40(4)，1390-1400，2014 年）。然而，对于认知的更高阶个体差异如何与这些眼动特征相关，我们知之甚少。在本研究中，健康的大学生参与者进行了几项个体差异任务，以衡量 WM 跨度和执行控制能力。参与者还执行了三项眼动任务：阅读、视觉搜索和场景观看。在所有任务中，较高的 WM 分数与注视持续时间分布的偏度降低有关。在阅读中，较高的 WM 分数预示着更长的眼跳。在场景观看中，较高的 WM 分数预示着更长的注视时间。讨论了这些发现的理论和临床意义。
