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Effect of working memory load on smooth pursuit eye movements

Poster Session C - Sunday, March 8, 2026, 5:00 – 7:00 pm PDT, Fairview/Kitsilano Ballroom

Beatrix Culligan¹ (), Serena Bunin^1,2, Hiu Mei Chow¹; ¹St. Thomas University, ²University of Guelph

Tracking a moving object involves both smooth pursuit eye movement (slow rotation of the eye) and saccades (quick jerky movements). When a distractor is presented during tracking, pursuit velocity and saccade rate decrease briefly (inhibition) before increasing (rebound) to normal, potentially indicating the brain’s ability to process and recover from the distractor. Given behavioural studies showing distractor processing can be affected by cognitive load, we ask here whether pursuit inhibition is sensitive to working memory (WM) load. We hypothesized that inhibition would be stronger with high-WM-load due to greater distractor interference. To examine this effect, we asked participants to visually track a dot moving across a screen while ignoring an unexpected flash distractor. Participants also remembered features of six numbers presented before each tracking trial. For the high-load task, participants needed to remember the order of six numbers; for the low-load task, they only needed to remember the colour. After tracking, a probe was presented, and participants indicated whether it matched or differed from what was remembered. Response accuracy was higher, and reaction times were faster in the low-load task, confirming our WM manipulation. The distractor reliably induced a drop in eye velocity, followed by a rebound, during the low-load task, replicating pursuit inhibition despite adding a secondary task. Finally, distractor effects on pursuit velocity were robust across high- and low-load conditions, suggesting that pursuit inhibition is immune to WM manipulation. Our findings support the idea that these rapid modulations of eye movements in response to distractors might be automatic.

Topic Area: ATTENTION: Other