Attention deployment during memorizing and executing complex instructions
- We investigated the mental rehearsal of complex action instructions by recording spontaneous eye movements of healthy adults as they looked at objects on a monitor. Participants heard consecutive instructions, each of the form "move [object] to [location]''. Instructions were only to be executed after a go signal, by manipulating all objects successively with a mouse. Participants re-inspected previously mentioned objects already while listening to further instructions. This rehearsal behavior broke down after 4 instructions, coincident with participants' instruction span, as determined from subsequent execution accuracy. These results suggest that spontaneous eye movements while listening to instructions predict their successful execution.
| Author details: | Jens K. Apel, Gavin F. Revie, Angelo CangelosiORCiDGND, Rob Ellis, Jeremy Goslin, Martin H. FischerORCiDGND |
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| DOI: | https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-011-2827-4 |
| ISSN: | 0014-4819 |
| Title of parent work (English): | Experimental brain research |
| Publisher: | Springer |
| Place of publishing: | New York |
| Publication type: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Year of first publication: | 2011 |
| Publication year: | 2011 |
| Release date: | 2017/03/26 |
| Tag: | Assembly task; Eye movements; Overt attention; Rehearsal; Sequential instruction; Working memory |
| Volume: | 214 |
| Issue: | 2 |
| Number of pages: | 11 |
| First page: | 249 |
| Last Page: | 259 |
| Funding institution: | EPSRC [EP/F028598/1] |
| Organizational units: | Humanwissenschaftliche Fakultät / Strukturbereich Kognitionswissenschaften |
| Peer review: | Referiert |
| Institution name at the time of the publication: | Humanwissenschaftliche Fakultät / Exzellenzbereich Kognitionswissenschaften |
