Retrieval-induced forgetting of eye movements

When eye-movement sequences are repeated, they can be stored as memory representations. Retrieval of eye-movement sequences then may involve interference among sequence representations. The present experiment examined this kind of interference and as to how it affects subsequent accessibility. Participants practiced twelve different eye-movement sequences by directing their gaze through a grid of squares on a screen. Half of the sequences involved moving the gaze from left to right, the other half from right to left. After the learning phase, participants retrieved half of the sequences of one category. This selective retrieval induced forgetting for the non-retrieved rest of sequences of the respective category: Fewer sequences were recalled as compared to sequences of the other category. The occurrence of retrieval-induced forgetting suggests that eye movements can be subject to the same mechanisms that shape our memory in other domains as well. Implications for the development of gaze-interaction systems for human-computer interaction are discussed.