425

The
British
Psychological
Society

British Journal of Developmental Psychology (2011), 29, 425436


C 2010 The British Psychological Society

www.wileyonlinelibrary.com

Preschool childrens eye-movements during

pictorial recall
Corinna S. Martarelli and Fred W. Mast
Department of Psychology, University of Bern, Switzerland
We investigated eye-movements during preschool childrens pictorial recall of seen
objects. Thirteen 3- to 4-year-old children completed a perceptual encoding and a
pictorial recall task. First, they were exposed to 16 pictorial objects, which were
positioned in one of four distinct areas on the computer screen. Subsequently, they
had to recall these pictorial objects from memory in order to respond to specific
questions about visual details. We found that children spent more time fixating the
areas in which the pictorial objects were previously displayed. We conclude that as early
as age 34 years old, children show specific eye-movements when they recall pictorial
contents of previously seen objects.

To date, a wealth of knowledge has been obtained showing that numerous processes
associated with visual perception are also engaged in mental imagery. The findings
are based on experiments using behavioural and neuroimaging techniques, however
relatively few studies compared eye-movements during perception and imagery. To
our knowledge, Clark (1916) carried out the first study and she pointed out that eyemovements occur more frequently when mental images become clearer, more detailed
and distinct. More than 40 years ago Hebb (1968) alluded to a functional involvement
of eye-movements in mental imagery. Early developmental psychologists Piaget and
Inhelder (1963) have linked mental images to motor skills and suggested that eyemovements during imagery reflect eye-movements during perception. Indeed, they
conceived mental images as internalized imitations of real-world events, which develop
at the end of the sensory-motor stage (18 months). Despite its theoretical importance,
Piaget and Inhelder have not addressed this issue of eye-movements further. In line with
their original ideas, we hypothesize that young children use eye-movements to recall
pictorial contents of previously seen images.
Whereas some studies addressed eye-movements during recall and mental imagery in
adult participants (Brandt & Stark, 1997; Johansson, Holsanova, & Holmqvist, 2006; Laeng
& Teodorescu, 2002; Spivey & Geng, 2001), relatively little is known about whether
children use eye-movements when they retrieve previously stored information from

Correspondence should be addressed to Corinna S. Martarelli, Department of Psychology, University of Bern, Muesmattstrasse
45, CH-3000 Bern 9, Switzerland (e-mail: corinna.martarelli@psy.unibe.ch).
DOI:10.1348/026151010X495844

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Corinna S. Martarelli and Fred W. Mast

memory. This is surprising because eye-movements have been collected successfully in

children and infants in studies on the development of perception (Simion & Butterworth,
1998) and spatial attention (Richards, 1998). Richardson and Kirkham (2004) found
memory driven eye-movements to empty locations in 6 months old infants. First, infants
were presented with auditory and visual stimuli (with no semantic links between them),
and then they heard the same auditory stimuli again while eye-movements on a neutral
background were recorded. It turned out that 6 months old infants look longer at areas
where the images were previously displayed. Richardson and Kirkham (2004) conclude
that infants spatially index auditory information. Saylor (2004) and Swingley and Fernald
(2002) demonstrate that infants understand references to previously mentioned objects
that are no longer present in the visual field. Taken together, there is compelling evidence
for a strong relation between listening to spoken words and eye-movements to absent
objects.
To widen our knowledge about the role of eye-movements during recall, it is
crucial to study childrens eye-movements during different memory tasks. Indeed, to
our knowledge, there is only one study, which investigated eye-movements during
recall in infants (Richardson & Kirkham, 2004). Whereas Richardson and Kirkham
examined eye-movements during recall of musical information we want to investigate
eye-movements during recall of pictorial information. The purpose of this study is to
look at eye-movements during childrens pictorial recall of seen objects; we define the
latter as visual memories based on earlier perceptual experience. To the extent that
children are asked to recall and visualize previously seen pictures and to respond to
specific questions, they need to create, maintain, and inspect mental images. Thus, it is
necessary to consider research on mental imagery.
Kosslyns theory (1973) emphasizing the spatial component of mental images inspired
several investigations about the role of eye-movements during imagery. In the following
we review several earlier studies based on adult participants, since they are relevant
for the study we present here. Laeng and Teodorescu (2002) found that eye scan paths
during perception and imagery were correlated, thus supporting the idea that eyemovements during imagery re-enact eye-movements that occurred during perceptual
encoding. Moreover, Laeng and Teodorescu provided important information about the
functional role of eye-movements. When participants were instructed to freely view the
stimuli during perceptual encoding, but were then asked to fixate the centre of the screen
during the imagery task, performance was diminished. Johansson et al. (2006) extended
Laeng and Teodorescus experiments and instructed their participants to both view and
imagine a complex picture or to create a mental image from a verbal description of this
picture. Their findings showed that eye fixations reflected the object positions while
participants recalled both visually and verbally encoded stimuli. Spivey and Geng (2001)
also found that adult participants fixate specific blank regions on a screen both when
they interpret a linguistic description of a visual scene (Expt 1) and when they recall
previously seen objects (Expt 2). To our knowledge, the first published research article
using the blank screen paradigm was Richardson and Spiveys study (2000), in which
they report eye-movements towards previously occupied locations. Moreover, Altmann
(2004) carried out an experiment in which participants were exposed to different stimuli
displayed in the corners of a computer screen (e.g., a man in the upper-right corner, a
woman in the lower-left corner, a cake in the upper-left corner, and a newspaper in the
lower-right corner). Then, the screen became blank and after 2 s the participants heard a
sentence like the man will eat the cake. Eye-movements revealed that the participants
look more often at the corresponding locations where they previously saw the pictures

Eye-movements and pictorial recall

427

of the man and the cake than at any other inappropriate location. Taken together, there
is strong evidence suggesting that specific eye-movements are generated when adult
participants retrieve previously stored information from memory.
The functional role that eye-movements play during the different tasks mentioned
above still is a matter of debate (Mast & Kosslyn, 2002). Essentially, two different
hypotheses have been proposed. It has been argued that eye-movements during imagery
re-enact to some extent similar eye-movements that were made during perceptual
encoding, and thus facilitate pictorial recall from memory. Noton and Stark (1971)
propose a scan path theory; they argue that while we scan a visual scene, we store
the sequence of fixations in memory as a spatial model and reactivate it when we
see this image again or when we imagine it later in the absence of any perceptual
information (Brandt & Stark, 1997). A different approach suggests that eye-movements
spatially index certain features in the external world, and thus help to associate
external cues with mental events. While these two different positions appear as if
they might be easily reconciled, the conclusions drawn about the underlying format
of representation are in fact mutually exclusive. Spatially indexing external features
is not interpreted as representing the spatial extent images embody (Pylyshyn, 2003).
Hence, the responsible format of representation is more associated with language-based
and descriptive processes (e.g., Pylyshyn, 2003).
When participants correctly or incorrectly retrieve previously seen information,
studying eye-movements may help to distinguish between the different theoretical
accounts. If eye-movements were not related to accuracy, it would imply that they are
merely epiphenomenal and this would speak against the re-enactment of the scan path.
Thus, we think that investigating the relation between accuracy and eye fixations can
help to better understand the role of eye-movements during pictorial recall. We tested
preschool children with a task similar to that used in the studies presented above (i.e.,
including a perceptual encoding and a pictorial recall task), but adapted the procedure to
the youngest possible age group. Testing preschool children has the advantage that these
participants are unlikely to guess the purpose of the experiment; demand characteristics
and tacit knowledge have been raised as objections to mental imagery experiments
(Pylyshyn, 1981, 2002, 2003). The purpose of this study is to examine the role of eyemovements during childrens pictorial recall of seen objects, and compare it with the
performance of adults.

Methods
Participants
Seventeen 3- to 4-year-old children participated in the perceptual encoding and in the
pictorial recall task. The results are based on thirteen 3- to 4-year-old children (M = 3.8
years, ranging from 3.3 to 5.1 years). The data from four children had to be excluded
because of inaccurate calibration values (two children) or because their performance
was at chance level (two children). Additionally, six adult participants (M = 32.4 years,
ranging from 26.6 to 38.1 years) volunteered to participate in this experiment. Informed
consent was obtained from the parents of the children and the study was approved by
the local ethics committee.
Apparatus
Eye-movements were recorded using the Remote Eye-tracking Device III tracking system
(RED) developed by SensoMotoric Instruments. This non-invasive video-based system

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Corinna S. Martarelli and Fred W. Mast

includes a remote-controlled camera, which captures the childrens eye-gaze with a

sampling rate of 50/60 Hz (spatial resolution < 0.1 , gaze position accuracy < 0.51 ).
Head movements are compensated by tracking the cornea reflex with respect to the
static camera. The cornea reflex is used in combination with pupil location to determine
the gaze on the image. The device is contact free, which makes its use in studies with
preschool children particularly advantageous. The stimuli were presented on a 17-in.
screen using Presentation software (http://www.neurobs.com/presentation) and eye
data were recorded with I-View X Software.

Stimuli
Two black lines divided the screen (17 in.) into four equally sized areas. Coloured stimuli
appeared in one of the four areas (e.g., an angel or a squirrel). The objects covered, on
average, a visual angle of 11.35 (vertical) and 5.75 (horizontal). Figure 1 illustrates two
stimuli used during the perceptual encoding task. All stimuli were photographs modified
with Adobe Photoshop.
In the pictorial recall task, only the cross was present on a white background. The
children were asked to recall and visualize the previously seen pictures as precisely and
vividly as possible. Then, they were asked a detailed question about the pictures. For
example, Is the angel wearing shoes? or Is the squirrel eating?. All the questions were
specific to the stimuli they studied and could be answered by yes or no. The children
could not respond to the questions by simply referring to their conceptual knowledge
(e.g., what they know about angels in general). Yes and no responses were equal in
number and counterbalanced between tasks.

Procedure
The experiment consisted of four blocks, the order of which was counterbalanced across
participants. Each of the four blocks included a perceptual encoding task followed by
a pictorial recall task. The order of the stimuli within each task was randomized. In
the perceptual encoding task, the children observed a series of four stimuli, each of
which was positioned in a different area of the screen. They were first asked to name

Figure 1. Examples of the stimuli used during the perceptual encoding task. The stimulus could appear
in one of the four quadrants. The cross dividing the screen into four equally sized areas was present
during the pictorial recall phase.

Eye-movements and pictorial recall

429

the object displayed and then answered a specific question (see examples above). In the
pictorial recall task, they were asked to recall the stimuli presented previously during
the perceptual encoding task. The first image to recall never corresponded to the last
image they saw in the perceptual encoding task. The experimenter used the same names
the children used when they named the stimuli during the perceptual encoding task. As
before, a specific question was asked. The questions during the pictorial recall task were
new and differed from the questions asked during the perceptual encoding task. The
questions ensured that the children needed to recall the image from memory and inspect
it in order to extract details contained in the image. We introduced control trials (one
for each block), in which we used new stimuli the children have not memorized before
(e.g., Imagine a cup). The control images were also followed by a specific question
(such as Does the cup have a handle?).
All the children were tested individually. They sat 0.5 m away from the computer
screen. The experiment lasted around 15 min in total, each block lasted 3 min on average
and the minimum duration between perceptual encoding and recall was 45 s. Two
experimenters carried out the task. One experimenter was in charge of data collection
while the other interacted with the child, sat close behind him or her and looked at the
computer screen. A fixation point (a smiley) preceded each trial and appeared in the
centre of the screen. After the children indicated what they saw by naming the stimulus
and responded to the question the experimenter pressed one of the buttons on the
keyboard to move on to the next stimulus.

Results
One-sample, paired-samples, and independent-samples t tests and Cohens (1988) d
measure of effect size were calculated. Effect size measures for two dependent groups
were computed from the original standard deviations. This procedure does not use
the standard deviation corrected for the amount of correlation between variables and
therefore avoids an overestimation of effect size (Dunlop, Cortina, Vaslow, & Burke,
1996). We also computed analyses of variance and report as effect size the partial etasquare measure.
Children were able to reliably solve both tasks: they were correct in 89% (SD = 12%)
of the trials in the perceptual encoding task and in 82% (SD = 6%) of the trials in
the pictorial recall task. The performance in the perceptual encoding task was higher,
t(12) = 2.35, p = .037, d = .74, paired-samples t test. There was no correspondence
between incorrect trials from the tasks; only 3% of the incorrect trials in the pictorial
recall task match the incorrect trials in the perceptual encoding task. Moreover, an
effect of the stimuli can be excluded since stimuli in the pictorial recall task were
equally difficult (errors varying between 0 and 4 per stimulus in the children group,
with the maximum number of errors being 13). Adult participants were correct in all
trials in the perceptual encoding task and they were correct in 93% of the trials in the
pictorial recall task (SD = 10%). Performance in the two tasks did not differ for adults,
t(5) = 1.78, p = .135, d = .99, paired-samples t test. Compared to children, adults had
a higher performance in the pictorial recall task, t(17) = 2.96, p = .009, d = 1.48,
independent-samples t test.
For the analysis of childrens looking times, 18% (between 0 and 35% per child) of the
trials from the pictorial recall task were discarded because children were occasionally
looking away from the computer screen, and thus we were unable to record any

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Corinna S. Martarelli and Fred W. Mast

Percentage of time spent

in the corresponding AOIs

eye data. Only 1% (between 0 and 6% of the trials per adult) of the total number of
trials from the pictorial recall task had to be discarded for the adult participants. All
analyses are based on fixations, which were computed by subtracting saccades and eye
blinks from the original gaze stream (using Be-Gaze software, SensoMotoric Instruments).
Saccades were detected when peak values of velocities were above 75 /s and between
20 and 80% of the distance between start and end position and when the duration
was longer than 1 ms. Eye blinks were identified when the conditions for saccade
detection were fulfilled and when the value of the pupil diameter change exceeded
an internally defined threshold. Fixations below 100 ms were not included in the
analyses.
We analysed the eye-movement data from the pictorial recall task separately for
correct and incorrect trials. Four areas of interest (AOI) were defined by the four
quadrants on the screen (see Figure 1). We computed the percentage of time spent
in the corresponding areas (where the stimuli were displayed previously) and then
compared these values to chance level (25% of the total time). As illustrated in Figure 2,
children spent 39.2% (SD = 13.6%) of the total time looking at the corresponding
area while they answered questions about the pictures they studied before (total time is
defined by the time they spent looking at the screen). This value was above chance level,
t(12) = 3.77, p = .003, d = 1.04, one-sample t test. For incorrect trials, this value dropped
below chance level to 13.5% (SD = 11.7%), t(12) = 3.54, p = .004, d = .98, one-sample t
test. The difference between the time spent fixating the corresponding AOI in the correct
trials versus in the incorrect trials was significant, t(12) = 4.732, p < .001, d = 2.02,
paired-samples t test. Likewise, the adult participants spent more time (M = 52.7%,
SD = 19.2%) fixating the corresponding AOI when they solved the trials correctly. This
result was above chance level (25%), t(5) = 3.53, p = .017, d = 1.44, one-sample
t test. Adults error trials could not be analysed due to the fact that too few errors were
made. Adults showed a tendency to spend more time fixating the corresponding AOI
than children, but the difference did not reach statistical significance, t(17) = 1.77,
p = .095, d = .89, independent-samples t test.
In order to rule out a possible bias of overall trial duration, we compared the time
spent fixating the corresponding area with the mean time spent fixating one of the
other three areas. Three- to four-year-olds spent on average 844 ms (SD = 508) fixating
the corresponding area and 447 ms (SD = 335) fixating one of the other three areas,
85
75
65
55
45
35
25
15
5

52.7

39.2
13.5
Correct trials
children

Incorrect trials
children

Correct trials
adults

Figure 2. Percentage of time spent in the corresponding area with respect to the overall trial duration:
Childrens correct trials, childrens incorrect trials, and adults correct trials (there were too few
incorrect trials for adults because the task was easy for adults as it was adapted for children). The grey
dashed horizontal line represents performance at chance level. Errors bars indicate S.E.M.

Eye-movements and pictorial recall

431

t(12) = 3.16, p = .008, d = .92, paired-samples t test. The areas changed over trials
since the location of the stimuli varied. Analysing the participants on an individual basis
confirmed the overall pattern for 11 out of 13 children. The analysis of the error trials
revealed no difference between the time spent in the corresponding area (M = 531 ms,
SD = 719) and the time spent in any of the other areas (M = 557 ms, SD = 314),
t(12) = .16, p = .87, d = .05, paired-samples t test. Children spent roughly the same
time in the four areas when the trials were solved incorrectly.
Furthermore, we considered the position of the first fixation. Children allocated their
first gaze to the corresponding area in 38.5% of the trials (SD = 18.28) and this value
is above chance level (25%): t(12) = 2.45, p = .031, d = .74, one-sample t test. Again,
the analysis of error trials revealed a different result. In only 14.1% (SD = 23.4) did the
children then allocate their first gaze to the area where they previously saw the image,
and thus it did not differ from chance level: t(12) = 1.68, p = .119, d = .47, one-sample
t test.
Do the eye-movements we observed vary as a function of delay time? To analyse
delay time between the perceptual encoding of a given stimulus and later recall,
we differentiated between a short delay (13 stimuli between encoding and recall,
minimum duration 45 s) and a long delay (47 stimuli between encoding and recall,
minimum duration 90 s). No significant difference was found; the children spent 40.8%
(SD = 18.6%) of the time in the corresponding area when the delay between encoding
and recall was short and 38.2% (SD = 22.1%) of the time in the corresponding area
when the delay between encoding and recall was long, t(12) = .39, p = .7, d = .13,
paired-samples t test.
The analysis of the control stimuli did not reveal any preferred area on the screen,
neither in adults, F(3,15) = 0.74, p = .55, partial eta-square = .13 nor in children,
F(3,36) = 2.69, p = .06, partial eta-square = .18 (one way within ANOVAs). The
participants were asked to create a mental image of an object, which they had not
memorized before during the perceptual encoding task. It is noteworthy that the
childrens data showed a tendency to spend more time in the upper right area
(M = 45.2%, SD = 29.7%) than in any of the other three areas (upper-left AOI: M = 17.4%,
SD = 19.7%; lower-left AOI: M = 16.6%, SD = 30%; lower-right AOI: M = 20.8%,
SD = 22.2%). There is no significant difference in adults data even though they also
spent more time in the upper-right area (upper-right AOI: M = 38.2%, SD = 33.3%;
upper-left AOI: M = 13.5%, SD = 13.7%; lower-left AOI: M = 19.2%, SD = 22%; lowerright AOI: M = 28.9%, SD = 33.3%).

Discussion
The results from this study illustrate that young children make specific eye-movements
when they recall pictorial information from memory. They maintained their gaze longer
on areas where the pictures had been displayed when they were perceptually encoded.
Interestingly, eye-movements were at the corresponding locations only when the trials
were solved correctly. The discrepancy between correct and incorrect trials shows that
eye-movements to the corresponding location are involved in the correct retrieval from
memory of previously seen pictures. It is unlikely that poorly encoding the stimuli can
account for the incorrect trials during pictorial recall; only 3% of the stimuli solved
incorrectly belong to the incorrect trials during perceptual encoding. Moreover, the
stimuli were equally difficult in the pictorial recall task. This suggests that children

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were able to properly encode the stimuli even though we cannot exclude fully a
possible influence of encoding. Future research is needed to address this issue further,
for example by using a short-term pictorial recall task (i.e., asking specific questions
immediately after the stimulus disappeared).
Interestingly, also the first saccade was made more frequently towards the corresponding area. Studies on visual saliency report that the first saccade is driven by low-level
visual stimulus features such as contrast, luminance, and colour (Henderson, Weeks,
& Hollingworth, 1999; Parkhurst, Law, & Niebur, 2002). Evidently, in our study, no
external stimulus was present to drive eye-movements to a particular location. However,
it is possible that the imagined object stood in for the perceptual stimulus and thus
elicited the first saccade towards its previous spatial location. This interpretation is
rather speculative at this point in time and further research needs to be carried out. For
example, it would be possible to vary the spatial frequency of the stimuli the participants
need to recall later, and analyse whether the first saccades are directed more often to
the location where they saw the high-spatial frequency stimulus. Patterns with different
spatial frequencies have been used in studies on mental imagery, and it has been shown
that they engage in part the same brain areas involved in visual perception (Kosslyn,
Pascual-Leone, et al., 1999; Kosslyn, Sukel, & Bly, 1999; Thompson, Kosslyn, Sukel, &
Alpert, 2001).
Our study adds evidence to Ferreira, Apel, and Henderson (2008) and Richardson,
Altmann, Spivey, and Hoover (2009) who claimed that eye-movements are part of the
same mental representation, which includes spatial, visual, and semantic properties.
Retrieving some part of this representation (for example, by answering to specific questions) activates the whole memory trace, including eye-movements to the corresponding
location. It is possible that children retrieve some pictures and their locations correctly
(correct trials) whereas they fail to do so with other pictures (i.e., they do not remember
the pictures, nor their details or their locations (incorrect trials)). This explanation
is in line with Richardson and Spivey (2000) suggesting that many aspects of an event,
including spatial information, are activated while retrieving semantic information related
to this event. In other words, it could be that to retrieve the location of a picture, it is
necessary to recall this picture. Richardson and Spivey (2000) failed to find improved
retrieval from memory when people looked at the previously occupied position. The
authors have interpreted the occurrence of eye-movements as evidence for a perceptualmotor system that relies on the environment as an external memory. This view is
supported by Pylyshyn (2001, 2002, 2003) who suggests a similar approach in which eyemovements serve as spatial indexes to the external world. Even though the idea of spatial
indexes appears interesting it is noteworthy that eye-movements during mental imagery
also occur in complete darkness (Johansson et al., 2006). Johansson et al. (2006) point
out that associations between recalled pictures and positions in the visual environment
are rather unlikely to occur under conditions of complete darkness. Therefore, eyemovements may have a role that goes beyond the purpose of indexing external
features to reduce working memory load when recalling seen objects. Interestingly,
Ferreira et al. (2008) suggest that returning the eyes to the previous position facilitates
retrieval of stored information. This is in line with Laeng and Teodorescu (2002) who
provide evidence for a functional role of eye-movements in imagery. Nevertheless,
clear-cut support for a causal role of eye-movements still is lacking (Richardson et al.,
2009), and further investigations are needed, in which eye position is manipulated as an
independent variable.

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433

Hollingworth (2006) has shown that people were more accurate at remembering
specific details of an object when the object was presented at its original location and
in the same context where it was first encoded. He concludes that representations
of objects are bound in memory to the context in which they were encoded. In our
study, we cannot exclude that the fine cross dividing the screen into four equally sized
quadrants served as external cue and thus reduced workload. Indeed, Spivey and Geng
(2001) demonstrated that a rich visual context (in their case a 3 3 grid) enhances
eye-movements to blank areas where the stimuli were displayed when compared to
poor visual contexts (e.g., frame instead of a grid). It has to be noted, however, that the
context and task used by Spivey and Geng (2001) differed remarkably from the study
reported here.
Yet another line of research related to our findings are studies on the role of
spatial location in visual perception and memory. Hasher and Zacks (1979) claimed
that encoding of spatial location is automatic. Despite the fact that their view has been
criticized (see, for example, Naveh-Benjamin, 1988), several other studies support the
idea of automatic encoding (Andrade & Meudell, 1993; Van der Heijden, 1993). For
example, Hasher and Zacks (1979) suggest age as a criterion. Specifically, automatic
processes such as spatial location encoding do not improve much with age whereas
effortful processes like object memory undergo considerable development. It has
been shown that young children are sensitive to location (Kail & Siegel, 1977), and
more recently, Jansen-Osmann and Heil (2007) demonstrated that primary school-aged
children perform as well as adults in memory for location tasks (specifically in spatial
associate learning tasks). The results from our study are in line with these findings: 3to 4-year-olds show memory for location even though they are not explicitly asked to
recall the previous position of the stimuli. Location memory and object memory seem
to be two relatively independent systems with the former being more automatic than
the latter (Pollatsek, Rayner, & Henderson, 1990). Hence, adults and children showed
no difference in the eye-movement data (location memory), whereas adults were more
accurate than children in the pictorial recall task (object memory).
The crucial finding in our study is that revisiting previously occupied locations with
eye-movements is related to improved performance, and thus spatially confined eyemovements are part of the whole memory trace together with visual and semantic
aspects. Moreover, the delay time between perceptual encoding and recall did not
influence the results. The delay times in our study varied and some were considerably
longer than the delay used by Laeng and Teodorescu (2002) or Richardson and Kirkham
(2004), who also found no recency effect.
Another interesting finding is that children tend to spend more time in the upperright area when they had to imagine objects that they had not previously seen (control
stimuli). Even though this result failed to reach statistical significance, similar findings
have been reported in other studies investigating gaze aversion and were related to task
difficulty (Doherty-Sneddon, Phelps, & Clark, 2007; Glenberg, Schroeder, & Robertson,
1998; Previc, Declerck, & de Brabander, 2005). Studies investigating eye-movements
during different cognitive activities have shown a robust upper visual field bias, not only
in lower-level functions (such as visual search) but also in higher-level functions such
as abstract thinking, arithmetic, and semantic processing (Ehrlichman & Weinberger,
1978; Previc & Murphy, 1997). Previc and Murphy (1997) found significant upward
gaze shifts and a tendency for rightward gaze shifts in a visuo-spatial task. In addition,
Buckner, Meara, Reese, and Reese (1987) found that eye fixations in the upper-right
corner are linked with the construction of a mental image of something that had not

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Corinna S. Martarelli and Fred W. Mast

been seen before. Gaze aversion has been extensively studied in adults and primary
schoolchildren, whereas little is known about how 3- to 4-year-old children use this
strategy that is thought to enhance concentration. Although this was not the question
we wanted to address in this study, it is certainly worth further study.
To summarize, the present article suggests that young childrens eye fixations during
pictorial recall reflect the location of where the stimuli were previously encoded. Eye
fixations were more often in the correct quadrant when the trials were solved correctly
compared to when the response was wrong. The finding reported in this study could also
be interesting from an applied perspective. Future memory training methods may benefit
from including eye-movements as a strategy to better retrieve the original trace. Nearly
50 years after the publication of Piaget and Inhelders (1963) ideas on eye-movements,
we have provided empirical evidence implicating the involvement of eye-movements in
childrens recall of pictorial objects.

Acknowledgements
This research was supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation, PDFM1-114406,
Pro Doc (awarded to F. W. M.). We thank all children and parents who participated in this
study, Dario Bombari for his help during data collection, and Andrea Frick, Janek Lobmaier,
Jane Aspell, and two anonymous reviewers for providing helpful comments on earlier versions
of the manuscript.

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Received 5 May 2009; revised version received 12 February 2010