Yating Liu Abstracts

Yating Liu
Ph.D. Student
Cognitive Science GIDP Minor

6th International Conference on Memory
Budapest, Hungary
July 17-22, 2016

Abstract

Relational memory refers to memory for arbitrary associations among components of experience, and is thought to be critically dependent on the hippocampus. We used eye tracking to examine whether relational binding continues developing during middle childhood. 7-8 year olds (n= 30) and young adults (n= 30) learned face-scene pairings and later selected the matching face from three familiar ones based on a scene cue. Along with higher identification accuracy, adults showed an earlier looking preference towards correctly identified faces (250-500ms) as compared to children (500-750ms). Although both groups didn’t demonstrate implicit preferential viewing towards the matching face on incorrect trials, eye movements revealed that children were more resolute in their choices regardless of accuracy.

Abstract for Lay Audience
Relational memory refers to the memory for arbitrary associations among event components (item-context) in our daily experience, and the ability to form relational bindings is thought to be critically dependent on the hippocampus. Evidence from previous behavioral studies demonstrated that the protracted developmental trajectory of hippocampus is consistent with development of relational memory.

Recently, some empirical evidence suggested that eye movement can be regarded as an indirect index to reflect the ability to from relational representations. Although some eye tracking studies have been conducted in infants and adults, the developmental changes in eye movement effect have been less studied beyond early childhood. Therefore, the study that I present in 6th ICOM, which title is “Development of Relational Memory in Middle Childhood: Evidence from Eye Movements”, will add this missing piece to the developmental trajectory of relational memory based on eye movement effect. By using the same face-scene paradigm in previous relational memory task, we found that along with higher identification accuracy, adults showed stronger and earlier looking preference towards target areas than children, which may be accounted for their tighter and more flexible relational bindings that dependent on structurally and functionally matured hippocampus. In other word, hippocampal functions may continuously develop into middle childhood based on the observed age-related difference in viewing patterns during relational retrieval.

Additionally, my current research also suggests that eye tracking measurement may be regarded as a promising tool to examine age-related difference in human memory. Except for providing precise temporal and spatial information during memory encoding and retrieval, eye tracking method also allows us to access to wider range of populations since it is not restricted by language, motor skills or other factors. Therefore, it is possible for us to interpret the potential mechanisms that underlying the development of memory-related eye movements across multiple age periods.