Allocation of visual attention is crucial for encoding items into visual long-term memory. In free vision, attention is closely linked to the center of gaze, raising the question whether foveal vision loss entails suboptimal deployment of attention and subsequent impairment of object encoding. To investigate this question, we examined visual long-term memory for objects in patients suffering from foveal vision loss due to age-related macular degeneration. We measured patients' change detection sensitivity after a period of free scene exploration monocularly with their worse eye when possible, and under binocular vision, comparing sensitivity and eye movements to matched normal-sighted controls. A highly salient cue was used to capture attention to a nontarget location before a target change occurred in half of the trials, ensuring that change detection relied on memory. Patients' monocular and binocular sensitivity to object change was comparable to controls, even after more than 4 intervening fixations, and not significantly correlated with visual impairment. We conclude that extrafoveal vision suffices for efficient encoding into visual long-term memory.
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