Project Description
We will investigate false memories for words by measuring pupil dilation. In a previous project, my lab presented participants with lists of spoken words, such as lip, tin, type, etc. When asked to recall the words, participants often “remembered” the unheard word tip. In the current project, our goal is to measure such false memories in a more sensitive manner. We will build on recent research which has demonstrated a “pupil old/new” effect: after studying a list of words, people’s pupils dilate when they hear a studied (“old”) word, but not when they hear an unstudied (“new”) word. Our hypothesis is that the old/new effect will also occur for falsely remembered words. Importantly, we can investigate pupil dilation as a gradient measure, even when a participant does not have a conscious memory of tip. We will test this hypothesis using an Eyelink 1000 eye-tracker.
Tasks and Responsibilites
The student will be involved in every aspect of the project. They will learn how to calibrate the eye-tracker, and how to obtain pupil measurements from it. In order to build a pilot experiment, they will learn how to use the tracker’s programming environment. The student will recruit a speaker to record high-quality audio stimuli, and use phonetics software to process these stimuli.
Desired Qualifications
None Listed