From Saccades to Saliency: The role of eye movements in sensory and social cognition

25.04.2026, Saturday, 15:15-16:15

Chair: Marek Pędziwiatr
Centre for Brain Research, Jagiellonian University, Kraków, Poland

15:15 Philippe Blondé

Centre for Cognitive Science, Jagiellonian University, Kraków, Poland

"When attention drifts, memories fail to form but not to degrade"

Mind wandering (MW) shifts attention from external input to internal thoughts, leading to a perceptual decoupling that disrupts episodic memory encoding. Although MW impairs memory performance, it remains unclear whether this impairment reflects a failure to encode information or a degradation of the fidelity of stored representations.

We tested whether MW affects the probability of successful encoding and the precision of encoded representations (color and location).

Thirty-four participants encoded 100 picture-item associations, and later identified the correct item in a forced-choice recognition task. Participants reproduced the item’s original color and spatial location using circular responses scales. MW during encoding was measured with 14 thought probes (10-points Likert scale), while eye movements were recorded continuously. Response errors were modeled using a standard mixture model (von Mises + uniform), yielding estimates of retrieval probability (Pm) and mnemonic precision (κ).

MW significantly reduced episodic recall probability and increased response error for both color and spatial location, with a larger effect for location. Mixture modeling revealed that MW selectively decreased the probability of successful retrieval (Pm) and increased random responding, while leaving mnemonic precision (κ) largely unchanged. Oculomotor analysis showed that MW was accompanied by a decrease in saccade and fixation counts, together with an increase in blink frequency and saccade durations.

These findings suggest that MW creates an encoding failure rather than a degradation of stored representations. Consistent with the probability–precision dissociation framework, MW reduced the likelihood that an episodic trace was formed, but when encoding succeeded, representations retained normal fidelity. Thus, MW induces an “all-or-none” disruption of episodic encoding, suggesting an impaired engagement of encoding processes rather than a reduced representation.

15:30 Katarzyna Jurewicz

Centre for Cognitive Science, Faculty of Philosophy, Jagiellonian University, Kraków, Poland

"How saccadic eye movements organize auditory performance in naturalistic context"

Saccadic eye movements are one of the most common movements in primates. While their influence on neural activity has been traditionally studied in the visual system, saccades modulate ubiquitous networks that extend beyond the visual system. Despite these known dynamics, it is not clear how gazing behavior interacts with auditory cognition. Here, we studied auditory perception at different times relative to saccade onsets in freely viewing subjects.

Our study aims to define the impact of saccadic exploration on auditory perceptual threshold and performance across auditory tasks.

We conducted psychophysical experiments in which participants performed auditory tasks while freely viewing natural images. Each image was shown for 8 s and followed by content questions to encourage exploration. During a single image, 1–2 auditory probes were presented at random times through headphones. In Experiment 1, 10-ms pink noise was presented binaurally, with interaural time and level differences adjusted so it was perceived from the left or right. Participants reported the side via button press. In Experiment 2, a 6-ms tone (2 or 2.5 kHz) was presented monaurally to either ear, and participants indicated whether it was low or high.

Saccades away from sound elicited perceptual cost while saccades towards the sound elicited perceptual benefit in the task requiring integration of information from left and right ear (Exp. 1). The single-ear discrimination task also demonstrated the cost of saccading away from the sound (Exp. 2). However, no benefit could be observed here for the saccades towards the sound.

Our results suggest that saccades may support integration of information across ears or otherwise influence specific auditory processes during that task rather than uniformly influence auditory perceptual threshold. Alternative explanations will be tested with additional tasks aimed at dissociating perceptual and response-related processes.

15:45 Łukasz Grzeczkowski

Institute of Psychology, University of Social Sciences and Humanities (SWPS), Katowice, Poland

"Reward-based modulations of saccadic eye movement kinematics shape the time course of presaccadic attention"

Saccades are quick, ballistic eye movements characterized by consistent movement patterns: as their amplitude increases, so do their duration (linearly) and peak velocity (exponentially), a consistent relationship referred to as the main sequence. While this relation holds generally true, individual saccades can differ in vigor, i.e., moving faster or slower than expected. Another characteristic defining saccades is that they are preceded by a shift of presaccadic attention from the fixation to the saccade target location.

We designed a novel trial-based monetary reward paradigm to study simultaneously the reward-related modifications of saccade kinematics to random and predictable locations, and the potential impact on presaccadic attention.

A cue indicated one possible saccade target location among others. At various intervals preceding the saccade, a grating was flashed for 25 ms at the saccade target location. Participants saccaded to the target, were informed about the reward they received, and reported the orientation of the grating. The monetary reward was contingent on saccadic velocity. Participants were rewarded for making fast or slow saccades either in different experimental blocks to random locations (Experiment 1 and 2) or to specific fast- or slow-rewarded locations while they were randomly cued from trial to trial (Experiment 3).

In blocks rewarding fast movements, saccades had significantly higher velocity than in blocks rewarding slow movements. Simultaneously, we observed a shift in the time course of presaccadic attention. Rewarding slow saccades revealed a significant disadvantage in performance just before the saccade. Changing the reward rule from trial to trial had no effect on saccadic vigor, nor presaccadic attention even when the rewarded locations were predictable.

Our results demonstrate that the saccadic vigor and the time course of presaccadic attention can be strongly modulated by the reward associated with the movement.

16:00 Laureant Beaupoil

Institute of Psychology, Jagiellonian University, Kraków, Poland

"Objects of Truth: Predicting the authenticity judgement of journalistic images based on its contents, an eye-tracking study"

In contemporary online journalism, photographs play a central role in convincing users of the veracity of news. This can push forward "fake news", and eclipse real information. Although prior research on textual misinformation shows that directing attention to specific textual elements influences perceived authenticity, comparable research on images remains scarce.

We investigated which types of visual content influence the subjective perception of photographs as real or fake, and how visual attention to these elements affects authenticity judgments.

All stimuli were genuine press photographs obtained from the Polish Press Agency/European Press Agency. A large, representative Polish sample(N = 327) provided authenticity judgments along with narrative justifications. Qualitative analysis of these justifications yielded 15 content categories (e.g., Poverty, Protest, Child, Natural Disaster, Medical, Military, Fire, Wounds). Through another study, we defined Regions of Interest (ROIs) in the images. Machine learning classifiers were trained to predict authenticity judgments based on attributed content. A free-viewing eye-tracking study (N = 50) examined how visual attention predicted authenticity decisions. Participants were unaware that all photographs were real and that they would later evaluate authenticity. Mixed-effects models were applied using multiple gaze measures.

Classifiers achieved a minimum accuracy of 75%. Feature analysis identified Fire, Protest, and Natural Disaster as the strongest predictors of fake judgments. Eye-tracking analyses showed that sustained attention to Medical and Wounds content increased the likelihood of judging images as real, whereas attention to Child, Military, and Natural Disaster decreased it.

These findings demonstrate that specific visual contents, and sustained attention to them, can shape perceived authenticity and provide a basis for automated systems capable of identifying images likely to be perceived as misleading.

From Saccades to Saliency: The role of eye movements in sensory and social cognition

15:15 Philippe Blondé

15:30 Katarzyna Jurewicz

15:45 Łukasz Grzeczkowski

16:00 Laureant Beaupoil

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