LAN describes the behaviour of looking at empty spatial locations when
retrieving information from memory that has been associated with a
spatial location during encoding. For instance, when telling someone
about something written on a whiteboard, one likely looks at or even
points toward the whiteboard that contained the information, even if it
has since been cleaned and is now empty. Besides a remarkable robustness
of the behaviour the underlying processes are not well understood. The
proposed research aims to understand the retrieval processes leading to
LAN with a special focus on attention. In behavioural laboratory
experiments, we test whether, attention plays a role in producing LAN
and if it does whether it can be dissociated from that of eye movements.
Furthermore, we aim to test, if LAN is under voluntary control.
