Even if you like to brag about your visual memory, your recall may really depend on the direction of your gaze. That's what two MIT scientists say after testing people's recollection of items on a screen. We're OK at remembering where an object was in space. But we're better at remembering where it was in our eyeballs.
Brain researchers Julie Golomb and Nancy Kanwisher were interested in two types of visual memory. The first is called "spatiotopic": related to space. This would seem at first glance (ahem) to be the type of visual memory we use most often. We reach for a coffee cup while scanning the computer screen; we recall where in the kitchen we set down our keys. The second type of memory is "retinotopic": related to the retina of the eye. In this case, we recall an object's position relative to the direction of our gaze.
The ...
