Recent studies in rodents (McTighe et al, 2010; Burke et al, 2010) have suggested that forgetting is caused by the misidentification of novel stimuli as being familiar, matching the predictions of the representational-hierarchical model of Saksida & Bussey (2010). Here, we tested this idea in humans. Three groups of participants (young, healthy elders, elders at-risk for MCI) viewed novel and repeated stimuli in a continuous viewing task while their eye movements were recorded. According to the eye-movement based memory effect (Ryan et al, 2000) individuals make fewer fixations on items which are perceived as familiar. As interference increased, eye-movements directed to the novel stimuli declined, indicating these novel items were perceived as familiar. This effect was stronger in groups more vulnerable to interference (eg. at-risk elders). These results suggest that forgetting in humans, like rats, is driven by the misidentification of novel items as being familiar.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:TORONTO/oai:tspace.library.utoronto.ca:1807/31646 |
| Date | 04 January 2012 |
| Creators | Yeung, Lok Kin |
| Contributors | Barense, Morgan |
| Source Sets | University of Toronto |
| Language | en_ca |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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