Johansson, R., Holsanova J. & Holmqvist, K. (2006). Pictures and spoken descriptions elicit similar eye movements during mental imagery, both in light and in complete darkness. Cognitive Science 30:6 (pp. 1053-1079). Lawrence Erlbaum.
We show evidence that eye movements reflect the positions of objects while subjects listen to a spoken description, retell a previously heard spoken description, and describe a previously seen picture. This effect is equally strong in retelling from memory, irrespective of whether the original elicitation was spoken or visual. In addition, this effect occurs both while watching a blank white board and while sitting in complete darkness. We present four experiments. In the first two experiments we measured eye movements of subjects looking at a blank white board. In Experiment 1, we monitored eye movements of subjects on two occasions: First when they listened to a pre-recorded spoken scene description, and second, when they were later retelling it from memory. In Experiment 2, we first monitored eye movements of subjects as they studied a complex picture visually, and then later as they described it from memory. In the second pair of experiments (Experiments 3 and 4), we replicated Experiments 1 and 2 with the only difference being that they were executed in complete darkness. In our method of analysis, we differentiated between eye movements that are categorically correct relative to the positions of the whole eye gaze pattern (global correspondence), and eye movements that are only locally correct (local correspondence). In the discussion, we relate our findings to the current debate on mental imagery.
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