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The Effect of Gaze Reinstatement Precision on Memory

Poster Session F - Tuesday, March 10, 2026, 8:00 – 10:00 am PDT, Fairview/Kitsilano Ballroom
Also presenting in Data Blitz Session 1 - Saturday, March 7, 2026, 10:30 am – 12:00 pm PST, Salon ABC.

Yanxin Xu¹ (), Tarek Amer², Jordana Wynn³; ¹University of Victoria

Eye movements during memory retrieval often recapitulate those made during encoding—a phenomenon known as gaze reinstatement. While previous research has observed a link between gaze reinstatement and memory performance, the direction and strength of this relationship remain unclear. The present study aimed to establish a causal connection between gaze reinstatement and memory retrieval by experimentally and parametrically manipulating gaze position during retrieval and assessing memory performance continuously. Young adults encoded sequences of coloured shapes while their eye movements were recorded. During retrieval, gaze was constrained to within 0-30 degrees of an encoded shape’s location and participants were instructed to select the corresponding colour from a colour wheel. Consistent with our hypothesis, gaze position was positively predictive of memory performance. That is, fixating closer to the location of an encoded item was associated with more precise colour memory. These findings suggest that eye movements are tightly coupled to the encoding and retrieval of precise item features and support a functional role for gaze reinstatement in memory.

Topic Area: LONG-TERM MEMORY: Episodic