Pupil dilation during recognition memory: Isolating unexpected recognition from judgment uncertainty

•Orienting and uncertainty separately drive pupil size during memory decisions.•‘Early’ pupil dilation during judgment reflects unexpected recognition.•Trajectory of pupil dilation during judgment tracks general uncertainty regardless of recognition or expectation.•This dissociation emerged from nov...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Cognition 2016-09, Vol.154, p.81-94
Main Authors: Mill, Ravi D., O’Connor, Akira R., Dobbins, Ian G.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adolescent
Adult
Decision Making - physiology
Decision-making
Female
Humans
Judgment - physiology
Male
Memory, Episodic
Models, Neurological
Models, Psychological
Orienting
Pupil - physiology
Pupillometry
Recognition (Psychology) - physiology
Recognition memory
Uncertainty
Young Adult
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Summary:•Orienting and uncertainty separately drive pupil size during memory decisions.•‘Early’ pupil dilation during judgment reflects unexpected recognition.•Trajectory of pupil dilation during judgment tracks general uncertainty regardless of recognition or expectation.•This dissociation emerged from novel multi-level modeling of trial-wise dilation responses.•The same task-evoked dilation timecourse can be split into distinct cognitive components. Optimally discriminating familiar from novel stimuli demands a decision-making process informed by prior expectations. Here we demonstrate that pupillary dilation (PD) responses during recognition memory decisions are modulated by expectations, and more specifically, that pupil dilation increases for unexpected compared to expected recognition. Furthermore, multi-level modeling demonstrated that the time course of the dilation during each individual trial contains separable early and late dilation components, with the early amplitude capturing unexpected recognition, and the later trailing slope reflecting general judgment uncertainty or effort. This is the first demonstration that the early dilation response during recognition is dependent upon observer expectations and that separate recognition expectation and judgment uncertainty components are present in the dilation time course of every trial. The findings provide novel insights into adaptive memory-linked orienting mechanisms as well as the general cognitive underpinnings of the pupillary index of autonomic nervous system activity.
ISSN:0010-0277
1873-7838
DOI:10.1016/j.cognition.2016.05.018