Abstract
ABSTRACTMusic has been shown to entrain movement. One of the body’s most frequent movements, saccades, are arguably subject to a timer that may also be susceptible to musical entrainment. We developed a continuous and highly-controlled visual search task and varied the timing of the search target presentation, it was either gaze-contingent, tap-contingent, or visually-timed. We found: (1) explicit control of saccadic timing is limited to gross duration variations and imprecisely synchronized; (2) saccadic timing does not implicitly entrain to musical beats, even when closely aligned in phase; (3) eye movements predict visual onsets produced by motor-movements (finger-taps) and externally-timed sequences, beginning fixation prior to visual onset; (4) eye movement timing can be rhythmic, synchronizing to both motor-produced and externally timed visual sequences; each unaffected by musical beats. These results provide evidence that saccadic timing is sensitive to the temporal demands of visual tasks and impervious to influence from musical beats.
Highlights
People move to music, from the involuntary foot taps of headphone wearing commuters, to full body movements on a dance floor
Considering these multimodal entrainment effects of rhythmic body movement to musical beats, in this present study we endeavoured to investigate the impact of music on one of the human body’s most frequent motor actions, saccadic eye movements, which are a viable candidate due to their highly systematic timing
The length of time gaze remains stable at a particular spatial location varies, and the timing of eye movements is subject to both direct control as well an automated routine (Findlay & Walker, 1999)
Summary
From the involuntary foot taps of headphone wearing commuters, to full body movements on a dance floor. Changes in the frequency of physiological movements including heartrate and respiration can be induced by varying the tempo of background music (Khalfa, Roy, Rainville, Dalla Bella, & Peretz, 2008), in addition to the pace of motor actions, for example the speed of walking (Moens et al, 2014) Considering these multimodal entrainment effects of rhythmic body movement to musical beats (and the broader notion that perception is multimodal), in this present study we endeavoured to investigate the impact of music on one of the human body’s most frequent motor actions, saccadic eye movements, which are a viable candidate due to their highly systematic timing. A gaze-contingent sequential presentation could test whether eye movement timing is actively modulated by the entrained dynamics of visual attention (which is sensitive to musical beat), and if this is employed to enhance visual perception at predictable moments in time
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