Remember down, look down, read up: Does a word modulate eye trajectory away from remembered location?

Abstract

Previous studies show that eye movement trajectory curves away from a remembered visual location if a saccade needs to be made in the same direction as the location. Data suggest that part of the process of maintaining the location in working memory is the mental simulation of that location, so that the oculomotor system treats the remembered location as a real one. Other research suggests that word meaning may also behave like a 'real object' in space. The current study aimed to combine the two streams of research examining the effect of word meaning on the memory of a dot location. The results of two experiments showed that word meaning for 'up' (but not 'down') modulated both eye movement trajectory and location recognition time. Thus, mental simulation of task-irrelevant space-related word meaning affected both earlier stages of memory processes (maintenance of the location in the working memory) and later ones (location recognition).