Gautier Joanna, El Haj Mohamad
Nantes Université, Univ Angers, Laboratoire de Psychologie des Pays de la Loire (LPPL - EA 4638), Chemin de la Censive du Tertre, F44000 Nantes, France.
Nantes Université, Univ Angers, Laboratoire de Psychologie des Pays de la Loire (LPPL - EA 4638), Chemin de la Censive du Tertre, F44000 Nantes, France; CHU Nantes, Clinical Gerontology Department, Bd Jacques Monod, F44300, Nantes, France; Institut Universitaire de France, Paris, France.
Cognition. 2023 Jun;235:105416. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2023.105416. Epub 2023 Feb 21.
In everyday life, autobiographical memories are revisited silently (i.e., covert recall) or shared with others (i.e., overt recall), yet most research regarding eye movements and autobiographical recall has focused on overt recall. With that in mind, the aim of the current study was to evaluate eye movements during the retrieval of autobiographical memories (with a focus on emotion), recollected during covert and overt recall. Forty-three participants recalled personal memories out loud and silently, while wearing eye-tracking glasses, and rated these memories in terms of mental imagery and emotional intensity. Analyses showed fewer and longer fixations, fewer and shorter saccades, and fewer blinks during covert recall compared with overt recall. Participants perceived more mental images and had a more intense emotional experience during covert recall. These results are discussed considering cognitive load theories and the various functions of autobiographical recall. We theorize that fewer and longer fixations during covert recall may be due to more intense mental imagery. This study enriches the field of research on eye movements and autobiographical memory by addressing how we retrieve memories silently, a common activity of everyday life. More broadly, our results contribute to building objective tools to measure autobiographical memory, alongside already existing subjective scales.
在日常生活中，自传体记忆会在内心默默重温（即内隐回忆）或与他人分享（即外显回忆），然而，大多数关于眼动与自传体回忆的研究都集中在外显回忆上。考虑到这一点，本研究的目的是评估在对自传体记忆进行提取时（重点关注情感）的眼动情况，这些记忆是在内隐和外显回忆过程中被回忆起来的。43名参与者戴着眼动追踪眼镜大声和默默地回忆个人记忆，并根据心理意象和情感强度对这些记忆进行评分。分析表明，与外显回忆相比，内隐回忆期间的注视次数更少、持续时间更长，扫视次数更少、持续时间更短，眨眼次数也更少。参与者在内隐回忆期间感知到更多的心理意象，并且有更强烈的情感体验。我们结合认知负荷理论和自传体回忆的各种功能对这些结果进行了讨论。我们推测，内隐回忆期间注视次数更少、持续时间更长可能是由于心理意象更强烈。本研究通过探讨我们如何在内心默默回忆记忆（这是日常生活中的常见活动），丰富了眼动与自传体记忆的研究领域。更广泛地说，我们的研究结果有助于构建客观工具来测量自传体记忆，与现有的主观量表相辅相成。
