Effect of eye movement on memorization of threat words

The purpose of the current study is to investigate: (1) that memory bias that can be seen in depression, anxiety, and trauma in the procedure of presenting target words during eye movement, (2) that memory bias could be ameliorated by eye movement. Participants are thirty-four undergraduate and graduate students. They were asked to memorize words, which included neutral and threat words. The words were presented on display consecutively, during eye movement or eye stationary in front of the participants. By BDI, STAI-State, STAI-Trait, IES-R score, they were divided into high (>mean + 0.5SD) and low (<mean – 0.5SD) groups. The ratio of threat words to all words memorized was the dependent variable. We could not find any memory bias regarding BDI, STAI-State, STAI-Trait variables in the eye stationary condition. However, the ratio was statistically different between IES-R high and the low group in the eye stationary condition. Trauma could be the promising variable for detecting cognitive bias. The interaction between IES-R and eye movement was statistically significant. Compared with the IES-R low group, the high group showed a significantly high ratio in the high group in eye fixed condition. Also the ratio was significantly low in the high IES-R group in the eye movement condition. This indicates that eye movement does not only tax cognitively, but also facilitates processing emotional aspects of stimuli. The role of eye movement was discussed compared with exposure procedure and based on models of working memory and inter-hemispheric interaction.

Conference

English

Masaya Ichii

Ichii, M. (2020, January). Effect of eye movement on memorization of threat words. Poster presented at the 4th EMDR Asia International Conference, Bangkok, Thailand