How does the eye-movement system mediate the formation, retention and recall of visuospatial working memories?

The ability to recall and manipulate information about objects and locations is known as visuospatial working memory (VSWM). One controversial idea is that the ability to form and retain visuospatial working memories is linked to our ability to make eye-movements. More specifically, locations are memorised by making a map of the eye-movements that are needed to look at those locations. This project is designed to test this idea using a new technique called eye-rotation. In this technique, participants are asked to perform memory tasks on a computer with the eye in its usual position (ie facing straight ahead) or with the head rotated by 40 degrees (so that the participant is looking at the computer out of the corner of their eye). In the rotatedcondition it is impossible for participants to plan or execute eye-movements further into the periphery. If VSWM relies on eye-movements, this manipulation (which prevents eye-movements) should lead to poorer memory performance. The project will investigate the role of the eye-movement system in three different memory processes:

the formation of spatial working memories (encoding)
how these memories are kept active (rehearsal)
the recall of spatial information that has been stored in long-term memory (retrieval).