To examine the relationship between visual imagery and autobiographical memory, eye position and pupil size were recorded while participants first searched for memories and then reconstructed the retrieved memories (Experiment 1), or only searched for memories (Experiment 2). In Experiment 1, we observed that, although recollective experience was not associated with the number of fixations per minute, memories that took longer to retrieve were linked to increased pupil size. In Experiment 2, we observed that directly retrieved memories were recalled more quickly and were accompanied by smaller pupils than generatively retrieved memories. After correcting for response time, retrieval mode also produced an effect, showing that decreased pupil size is not simply due to directly retrieved memories being recalled more quickly. These findings provide compelling evidence that objective measures, such as pupil size, can be used alongside subjective measures, such as self-reports, to distinguish between directly retrieved and generatively retrieved memories.

为了检查视觉意象和自传体记忆之间的关系，参与者首先搜索记忆，然后重建检索到的记忆（实验 1），或仅搜索记忆（实验 2）时记录眼睛位置和瞳孔大小。在实验 1 中，我们观察到，虽然回忆体验与每分钟注视的次数无关，但检索时间更长的记忆与瞳孔大小增加有关。在实验 2 中，我们观察到直接检索的记忆比生成性检索的记忆回忆得更快，并且伴随着更小的瞳孔。校正响应时间后，检索模式也产生了效果，表明瞳孔缩小不仅仅是因为直接检索的记忆被更快地召回。