Pitem Oria, Mama Yaniv
Department of Psychology, Ariel University, Ariel, Israel.
Sci Rep. 2025 Jul 1;15(1):21233. doi: 10.1038/s41598-025-09703-7.
Pupillometry research has established that pupil size reflects cognitive processes through autonomic nervous system activity, with high arousal triggering pupil dilation. Studies examining pupil size during encoding have yielded conflicting results regarding its relationship with subsequent memory performance, and few have investigated baseline pupil size. This study examined whether pupil diameter before and during stimulus presentation predicts memory performance. We hypothesized that successfully recalled words would be associated with larger pupils than forgotten words, based on the role of arousal and attention in memory formation. To test these hypotheses, we conducted two experiments in which we tracked ninety-five psychology students' eyes while they performed a long-term memory test. The results depict larger pupil size while studying later successfully retrieved words. Interestingly, this phenomenon also occurs before word presentation (during baseline), which supports the "readiness to remember" (R2R) framework. This implies that pupillary changes while preparing to encode information can indicate later memory performance.
瞳孔测量研究已经证实，瞳孔大小通过自主神经系统活动反映认知过程，高度唤醒会引发瞳孔扩张。关于编码过程中瞳孔大小与后续记忆表现之间的关系，相关研究结果并不一致，而且很少有研究调查基线瞳孔大小。本研究考察了刺激呈现之前和期间的瞳孔直径是否能预测记忆表现。基于唤醒和注意力在记忆形成中的作用，我们假设，成功回忆的单词相比遗忘的单词会与更大的瞳孔相关联。为了验证这些假设，我们进行了两项实验，在实验中我们追踪了95名心理学专业学生在进行长期记忆测试时的眼睛。结果显示，在学习后来成功检索出的单词时，瞳孔尺寸更大。有趣的是，这种现象在单词呈现之前（基线期间）也会出现，这支持了“记忆准备”（R2R）框架。这意味着在准备编码信息时的瞳孔变化可以预示后来的记忆表现。
