Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

What factors influence our ability to maintain the temporal order of sequences in visual working memory? We used task-evoked pupillometry to investigate how the semantic content and spatial positions of images influence memory for temporal order. We found that memory for temporal order was stronger for sequences consisting of semantically meaningful images compared to abstract images, but there was no memory benefit for presenting sequences from left-to-right compared to centrally or from right-to-left. In addition, we found that pupil dilation was greater for sequences of semantic images compared to abstract images and particularly for items later in the sequence and in sequences presented from left-to-right. These results highlight the utility of using pupillometry to study working memory processes and provide new insights into how the nature of the items to be remembered and the spatial positions of those items influence visual working memory for temporal order.