Schedule of Events | Symposia

The dynamic interaction between narrative and gaze reinstatement across age groups

Poster Session B - Sunday, March 30, 2025, 8:00 – 10:00 am EDT, Back Bay Ballroom/Republic Ballroom

Ziming Cheng^1,2 (zcheng@research.baycrest.org), Donna Rose Addis^1,2,3, Jennifer Ryan^1,2,4; ¹Baycrest Health Sciences, Rotman Research Institute, ²Department of Psychology, University of Toronto, ³Department of Psychology, The University of Auckland, ⁴Department of Psychiatry, University of Toronto

Exploring one’s surroundings through eye movements is unsurprisingly beneficial in describing a scene. Interestingly, reinstating these eye movements when recalling a previously viewed scene (i.e., gaze reinstatement) can benefit memory even without visual inputs. This effect is particularly valuable for older adults, who show increased gaze reinstatement especially when facing demanding tasks. While prior research highlights the benefits of gaze reinstatement for eventual memory outcomes, the dynamic relationship between eye movements and the process of memory construction, especially across age groups, remains unclear. Here, while their eye movements were recorded, younger and older adults recounted the details present within a series of photos and subsequently recalled those descriptions. We examined the dynamic interplay between the reinstatement of encoding-related eye movements and the recall of the photo descriptions. Results revealed significant narrative reinstatement (i.e., repeating the details and temporal order of the photo descriptions) throughout the trials, with younger adults showing higher initial reinstatement than older adults. Results also revealed significant gaze reinstatement but only during a portion of the trial, with the effect emerging earlier in younger adults. A bi-directional temporal relationship occurred across time: narrative preceded gaze reinstatement; and subsequently, gaze reinstatement preceded narrative reinstatement. Such effects were less clearly delineated in older adults, suggestive of an age-related decline in the flexible use of eye movements to retrieve associated information in memory. Overall, this study expanded beyond the previous knowledge that eye movements unilaterally support memory, and showed a dynamic and age-sensitive bi-directional relationship between gaze and narrative reinstatements.

Topic Area: LONG-TERM MEMORY: Development & aging