Eye movements during long-term pictorial recall.

We investigated eye movements during long-term pictorial recall. Participants performed a perceptual encoding task, in which they memorized 16 stimuli that were displayed in different areas on a computer screen. After the encoding phase the participants had to recall and visualize the images and answer to specific questions about visual details of the stimuli. One week later the participants repeated the pictorial recall task. Interestingly, not only in the immediate recall task but also 1 week later participants looked longer at the areas where the stimuli were encoded. The major contribution of this study is that memory for pictorial objects, including their spatial location, is stable and robust over time.