Can changes in eye movement scanning alter the age-related deficit in recognition memory?

Abstract

Older adults typically exhibit poorer face recognition compared to younger adults. These recognition differences may be due to underlying age-related changes in eye movement scanning. We examined whether older adults' recognition could be improved by yoking their eye movements to those of younger adults. Participants studied younger and older faces, under free viewing conditions (bases), through a gaze-contingent moving window (own), or a moving window which replayed the eye movements of a base participant (yoked). During the recognition test, participants freely viewed the faces with no viewing restrictions. Own-age recognition biases were observed for older adults in all viewing conditions, suggesting that this effect occurs independently of scanning. Participants in the bases condition had the highest recognition accuracy, and participants in the yoked condition were more accurate than participants in the own condition. Among yoked participants, recognition did not depend on age of the base participant. These results suggest that successful encoding for all participants requires the bottom-up contribution of peripheral information, regardless of the locus of control of the viewer. Although altering the pattern of eye movements did not increase recognition, the amount of sampling of the face during encoding predicted subsequent recognition accuracy for all participants. Increased sampling may confer some advantages for subsequent recognition, particularly for people who have declining memory abilities.

Keywords: aging; eye movements; face perception; memory; recognition.

Figure 1

Display sequence in the study block. Base participants freely viewed the face (fixations are represented by the gray circles); yoked participants were restricted in viewing to a moving window which replayed the eye movements of a base participant; participants in the own condition were also restricted in viewing to a moving window but controlled the path of the window with their own eye movements.

Figure 2

Mean d′ scores of younger and older faces for older and younger participants across the three viewing conditions (bases, yoked, own). Error bars represent standard error. Participants who freely viewed the faces during study were significantly more accurate than participants whose viewing was restricted by a moving window (i.e., yoked, own). Yoked participants were more accurate than own participants who were in control of the moving window. The own-age recognition bias for older adults (higher accuracy for older versus younger faces) was observed regardless of viewing condition.

Figure 3

Mean d′ scores for younger and older faces for older and younger yoked participants who followed the eye movements of older or younger base participants. Error bars represent standard error. Accuracy was not influenced by age of the base participant.