Schedule of Events | Symposia

Impacts of Mental Imagery Vividness on Adolescents’ Eye Movements During an Encoding and Recall Science Learning Task

Poster Session A - Saturday, March 29, 2025, 3:00 – 5:00 pm EDT, Back Bay Ballroom/Republic Ballroom

Sarah Wene¹ (sw0661a@american.edu), Cassandra Ivie¹, Elshadai Melkam¹, Sophia Stull¹, Emily Peterson¹; ¹American University, Washington D.C.

Greater similarity in eye movements during image viewing and recall (gaze reinstatement) is suggestive of higher mental imagery, which is an important aspect in STEM learning. However, most gaze reinstatement research has looked at adults’ memory for decontextualized images. Therefore, whether vividness of mental imagery impacts adolescents’ eye movements in an authentic learning task was the focus of this investigation. Participants enrolled in a geospatial science course completed the Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire (VVIQ) to measure general levels of self-reported mental vividness and had their eyes tracked during a science learning task. Students were presented with maps of scientific phenomena as visual stimuli and asked to generate statements of “I notice” or “I wonder” based on what they saw while encoding the image. During recall they were asked to state everything they could remember about each map while looking at a blank screen and to rate the vividness of their mental imagery. Positive correlations between the encoding and recall trial fixation count support gaze reinstatement. Adolescents with higher VVIQ scores made more fixations during encoding and recall, and viewed a greater diversity of areas during recall. However, state mental vividness only correlated with fixation count during encoding. These results support previous gaze reinstatement findings when applied to an ecologically valid learning task. Further, results indicate that in addition to recall, mental vividness may be relevant during encoding, which could potentially lead to interventions that support students’ visual attention during learning to enhance memory performance.

Topic Area: ATTENTION: Spatial