Kumcu Alper, Thompson Robin L
University of Birmingham School of Psychology, Birmingham, West Midlands, UK.
Psychol Res. 2020 Apr;84(3):667-684. doi: 10.1007/s00426-018-1084-6. Epub 2018 Sep 1.
People revisit spatial locations of visually encoded information when they are asked to retrieve that information, even when the visual image is no longer present. Such "looking at nothing" during retrieval is likely modulated by memory load (i.e., mental effort to maintain and reconstruct information) and the strength of mental representations. We investigated whether words that are more difficult to remember also lead to more looks to relevant, blank locations. Participants were presented four nouns on a two by two grid. A number of lexico-semantic variables were controlled to form high-difficulty and low-difficulty noun sets. Results reveal more frequent looks to blank locations during retrieval of high-difficulty nouns compared to low-difficulty ones. Mixed-effects modelling demonstrates that imagery-related semantic factors (imageability and concreteness) predict looking at nothing during retrieval. Results provide the first direct evidence that looking at nothing is modulated by word difficulty and in particular, word imageability. Overall, the research provides substantial support to the integrated memory account for linguistic stimuli and looking at nothing as a form of mental imagery.
当人们被要求检索视觉编码信息时，即使视觉图像不再呈现，他们也会重新访问该信息的空间位置。在检索过程中这种“看空”的行为可能受到记忆负荷（即维持和重建信息的心理努力）和心理表征强度的调节。我们研究了更难记忆的单词是否也会导致更多地看向相关的空白位置。参与者在一个2×2的网格上看到四个名词。控制了一些词汇语义变量以形成高难度和低难度名词集。结果显示，与低难度名词相比，在检索高难度名词时看向空白位置的频率更高。混合效应模型表明，与意象相关的语义因素（可意象性和具体性）预测了检索过程中的“看空”行为。结果提供了首个直接证据，表明“看空”行为受到单词难度，特别是单词可意象性的调节。总体而言，该研究为语言刺激的综合记忆解释以及将“看空”作为一种心理意象形式提供了大量支持。
