Practice Improves Recall but Not Looking-at-Nothing: Eye Movements to Emptied Spatial Locations Remain Stable Across Repetition

When retrieving information previously associated with spatial locations, people often look back at these locations even when they are empty—a phenomenon known as looking-at-nothing (LAN). Most theoretical explanations of LAN agree that it demonstrates recollection of item-location information stored in memory. However, it remains unclear how long such location-based information continues to guide eye movements and whether LAN reflects recollection of bindings in working memory (WM) or associations stored in episodic long-term memory (eLTM). We addressed this question by testing immediate recognition of auditorily presented sentences associated with spatial locations across multiple practice blocks, thereby strengthening item–location associations over time. If LAN reflects recollection from LTM, its magnitude should increase with practice; if it depends on recollection of bindings from WM, LAN should remain stable. Across two experiments—one conducted in the laboratory and one online—practice substantially improved recognition accuracy and response times, but LAN remained constant over repeated retrievals. These findings indicate that spatial information continues to be used during retrieval, but when location is irrelevant to the task at hand its influence does not depend on LTM strength. LAN thus provides a behavioral marker of internal attention to WM content, independent of memory strength in LTM.