Pupillary measurement and release from proactive inhibition.

One of the explanations of release from proactive inhibition in short-term memory is that the subjects re-attend to the items on the release trial because the items are different from the previous ones. It is further assumed that this increase in attention causes the relase items to be learned better than the preceding items. This experiment measured the pupils of the subjects' eyes while they were participating in a proactive-inhibition release-type task. The results showed no increase in attention, as indexed by pupil size, on the release trial. This did not support the attentional explanation of the proactive-inhibition release phenomenon.