Journal List > J Korean Neuropsychiatr Assoc > v.53(5) > 1017691

Lee, Kim, Kim, Im, Kwon, Kim, Kim, and Lim: The Effect of Bilateral Eye Movements on Emotional Face Recognition Memory Task

Abstract

Objectives

Previous studies have shown that bilateral eye movements enhance episodic memory retrieval. However, few studies on the effect of bilateral eye movements on emotional memory have been reported. Therefore, this study was conducted in order to investigate the differences in memory retrieval between neutral and angry stimuli after bilaterally alternating eye movements.

Methods

Twenty seven healthy right-handed subjects participated in this study. The participants learned faces (angry or neutral face), and then performed a recognition memory task in relation to the faces after bilateral eye movements and central fixation. Recognition accuracy, response bias, and mean response time to hits were compared and analyzed. Two-way repeated measure analysis of variance was performed for statistical analysis.

Results

There was a significant effect of bilateral eye movement conditions in recognition accuracy (F=13.833, p<0.01). Statistically significant interaction effects were observed between eye movement condition and face emotion type (F=6.253, p=0.02).

Conclusion

In this study, recognition memory for angry faces was more enhanced than that for neutral faces after bilateral eye movements. This finding suggests that bilateral eye movements can improve recognition memory for emotional stimuli more than that for neutral stimuli.

Figures and Tables

Table 1
Demographic characteristics of participants
jkna-53-293-i001

K-WAIS IQ : Korean-Wecshler Adult Intelligence Scale intelligence quotients, SD : Standard deviation

Table 2
Recognition accuracy (Pr) and response bias (Br) and mean response time to hits (RT, msec) values as a function of memory task, facial emotion and eye movement condition
jkna-53-293-i002

SD : Standard deviation

Table 3
Repeated measure analysis of variance of recognition accuracy for emotion type and eye movement condition
jkna-53-293-i003

* : p<0.05. EM : Bilateral eye movement

Notes

The authors have no financial conflicts of interest.

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