Listening to music reduces eye movements

Abstract

Listening to music can change the way that people visually experience the environment, probably as a result of an inwardly directed shift of attention. We investigated whether this attentional shift can be demonstrated by reduced eye movement activity, and if so, whether that reduction depends on absorption. Participants listened to their preferred music, to unknown neutral music, or to no music while viewing a visual stimulus (a picture or a film clip). Preference and absorption were significantly higher for the preferred music than for the unknown music. Participants exhibited longer fixations, fewer saccades, and more blinks when they listened to music than when they sat in silence. However, no differences emerged between the preferred music condition and the neutral music condition. Thus, music significantly reduces eye movement activity, but an attentional shift from the outer to the inner world (i.e., to the emotions and memories evoked by the music) emerged as only one potential explanation. Other explanations, such as a shift of attention from visual to auditory input, are discussed.

The impact of music and stretched time on pupillary responses and eye movements in slow-motion film scenes

“…Only blink frequency was affected by music, showing that participants blinked more often with music than without. Contrary to other research, there were also no effects on eye movement parameters (Mera & Stumpf, 2014;Schäfer & Fachner, 2015), and we did not find systematic effects of music on viewers' scene perception as suggested by Auer et al (2012). Our results are more in line with Coutrot and Guyader (2014) and Smith (2014), who found no influence of non-diegetic sounds on eye movements, using speech, natural sounds, and music.…”

“…One of the few experiments investigating the impact of music on eye movements was carried out by Schäfer and Fachner (2015). Participants watched pictures and video clips while listening to their favourite music, unknown music, or no music.…”

“…Based on the research discussed above, we first hypothesised that presenting scenes with music compared to no music results in viewers being more aroused, and that music influences visual attention and perception. Specifically, we expected that average pupil diameter would be larger when watching slow-motion scenes with music than without music, indicating higher arousal (Gingras et al, 2015;Laeng et al, 2016), and that music would cause a reduction in gaze behaviour (Mera & Stumpf, 2014;Schäfer & Fachner, 2015). Second, we assumed that playback speed (slow motion vs. adapted real-time motion) influences viewers' visual perception, allowing for a more dispersed gaze behaviour and more attention to detail.…”

Slow motion in films and video clips: Music influences perceived duration and emotion, autonomic physiological activation and pupillary responses

“…Further research using eye-tracking found that viewers attend differently to details in images depending on their music-induced emotions [ 32 , 33 ]. When watching visual stimuli with music or in silence in an experimental study, the music reduced eye movements in terms of longer fixations, a higher number of blinks and fewer saccades, arguably related to a shift of attention to an “inner world” ([ 34 ], p. 556). Music may thus induce states of contemplation and attention to inner processes.…”

Saccades predict and synchronize to visual rhythms irrespective of musical beats

“…The evidence of implicit musical influence on eye movement timing is more limited. A study by Schäfer and Fachner (2014), eye-tracked participants who free-viewed either a static scene of a house, or a first person film of a car driving down an empty road. The visuals were presented with background music or in silence.…”