Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Internally focused attention, characterized by reduced sensory input, is often correlated with memory retrieval and theability to combine memories to generate new ideas. Accordingly, the attenuation of external distractors (e.g., via reducedvisual input) may be expected to enhance idea generation. We conducted a study requiring participants to perform analternative uses task, in either a well-lit or totally dark environment. We also measured eye movements, as they have beenlinked with idea generation and attention. Departing from prior studies, our participants were not presented with visualstimuli, but received auditory task instructions. Preliminary analyses replicated the eye behavior attributed to internalattention in previous research, including more and shorter fixations and greater saccade amplitude in the dark. While theseresults suggest a positive relationship between darkness and internal attention, task performance was not significantlyinfluenced by darkness manipulation. The findings and suggestions for future studies will be discussed.