Memory for relational information across eye movements

Abstract

Structural descriptions are hierarchical representations of a visual stimulus in terms of its parts and their relations. Previous research in which the retention of parts was examined has shown that structural descriptions can be used to represent information in transsaccadic memory. In three experiments, this idea was tested further by examining whether relational information is also maintained across saccades. Experiment 1, in which a same/different comparison task was used, showed that both part and relation information are retained across fixations in the same manner as within a fixation. Experiment 2 showed that such retention is impervious to instruction. Finally, Experiment 3, in which a new set of stimuli was used, demonstrated that both coordinate and categorical relations are maintained across saccades. The results indicate that structural descriptions can be used to represent information in transsaccadic memory in a manner similar to their use in visual short-term memory.