Reinstated patterns of visual attention promote flexible scene recognition
Tingwei Hu, Hae Young Yi, Paula Pacheco Brooks, Maureen Ritchey · 2023
Memories are retrieved more easily when they are processed in similar ways between encoding and retrieval. These benefits are evident in patterns of visual attention inferred from eye movements, with reinstatement of encoding-related gaze patterns associated with successful recognition. In this study, we tested whether scene recognition could be supported by similarities in visual attention even when the retrieval probes themselves have been altered since encoding. Participants were asked to discriminate between previously-studied targets and similar lures, and we manipulated the contents and visual perspective of the scenes by presenting retrieval probes as intact, horizontally flipped from encoding, or blurred to obscure their visual details. While blurring was associated with reduced gaze reinstatement, eye movements flipped in alignment with the retrieval probe, leading to equivalent levels of gaze reinstatement when probes were flipped versus intact. Furthermore, gaze reinstatement was associated with memory outcomes only in the flipped condition. These results suggest that gaze reinstatement facilitates recognition of altered scenes by recapitulating the feature maps that had been attended during encoding, compensating for changes in visual perspective. In this way, gaze reinstatement allows us to mentally align retrieval cues with what we can recall from encoding, promoting flexible scene recognition.