Eye movements to “nothing” have an active role during visuospatial memory retrieval

Several studies have reported that spontaneous eye movements occur with visuospatial imagery and that they closely reflect content and spatial relations from an original picture or scene during episodic memory retrieval (e.g., Brandt& Stark, 1997; Johansson, et al., 2006). Nevertheless, the role for these eye movements to “nothing” is elusive and has been debated extensively in current research (cf., Ferreira et al., 2008; Richardson et al., 2009). Do they have an active and functional role when visuospatial information is retrieved from memory or are they merely an epiphenomenon which does not interact with mnemonic mechanisms in any useful way? The present study was designed to address this fundamental issue by investigating how imposing different eye movements on participants affects retrieval performance of visuospatial information. Results provide robust evidence that eye movements to “nothing” do have an active and supportive role during visuospatial recollections, and that they indeed can act as facilitatory retrieval cues in this process.