Working memory load modulates microsaccadic rate

Dalmaso, Mario; Castelli, Luigi; Scatturin, Pietro; Galfano, Giovanni

doi:10.1167/17.3.6

Cited by 58 publications

(74 citation statements)

References 61 publications

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“…Analysis of microsaccade differences between experiments shows that the microsaccade rate was overall lower in Experiment 1 compared to Experiment 2 ( Figure 6). Microsaccade rate has been shown to decrease with high cognitive load (Dalmaso et al, 2017;Xue et al, 2017) and task difficulty (Siegenthaler et al, 2014). This is in line with the overall lower performance in Experiment 1 compared to Experiment 2 but is in contrast to the overall larger pupil size (relative to baseline) and larger effect of speech clarity in Experiment 2 compared to Experiment 1.…”

Section: Microsaccades Are Not Influenced By Semantic Ambiguity and Ssupporting

confidence: 67%

Pupil dilation is sensitive to semantic ambiguity and acoustic degradation

Kadem

Herrmann

Rodd

et al. 2020

Preprint

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Speech comprehension is often challenged by background noise or other acoustic interference. It can also be challenged by linguistic factors, such as complex syntax, or the presence of words with more than one meaning. Pupillometry is increasingly recognized as a technique that provides a window onto acoustic challenges, but this work has not been well integrated with an older literature linking pupil dilation to "mental effort", which would include linguistic challenges. Here, we measured pupil dilation while listeners heard spoken sentences with clear sentence-level meaning that contained words with more than one meaning ("The shell was fired towards the tank") or matched sentences without ambiguous words ("Her secrets were written in her diary"). This semantic-ambiguity manipulation was crossed with an acoustic manipulation: two levels of a 30-talker babble masker in Experiment 1; and presence or absence of a pink noise masker in Experiment 2. Speech comprehension, indexed by a semantic relatedness task, was high (above 82% correct) in all conditions. Pupils dilated when sentences included semantically ambiguous words compared to matched sentences and when maskers were present compared to absent (Experiment 2) or were more compared to less intense (Experiment 1). The current results reinforce the idea that many different challenges to speech comprehension, that afford different cognitive processes and are met by the brain in different ways, manifest as an increase in pupil dilation.

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Section: Microsaccades Are Not Influenced By Semantic Ambiguity and Ssupporting

confidence: 67%

Pupil dilation is sensitive to semantic ambiguity and acoustic degradation

Kadem

Herrmann

Rodd

et al. 2020

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…Dalmaso et al [ 31 ] also reported that working memory load is reflected in microsaccade rate and magnitude. From two experiments, results showed that microsaccadic rate drops in the rebound phase of a high demand task (200-400 ms after onset), compared to an easier task.…”

Section: Related Work: Eye Trackingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Eye tracking cognitive load using pupil diameter and microsaccades with fixed gaze

et al. 2018

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Pupil diameter and microsaccades are captured by an eye tracker and compared for their suitability as indicators of cognitive load (as beset by task difficulty). Specifically, two metrics are tested in response to task difficulty: (1) the change in pupil diameter with respect to inter- or intra-trial baseline, and (2) the rate and magnitude of microsaccades. Participants performed easy and difficult mental arithmetic tasks while fixating a central target. Inter-trial change in pupil diameter and microsaccade magnitude appear to adequately discriminate task difficulty, and hence cognitive load, if the implied causality can be assumed. This paper’s contribution corroborates previous work concerning microsaccade magnitude and extends this work by directly comparing microsaccade metrics to pupillometric measures. To our knowledge this is the first study to compare the reliability and sensitivity of task-evoked pupillary and microsaccadic measures of cognitive load.

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“…Microsaccades are increasingly understood to reflect an active attentional sampling mechanism which is mediated by the SC (Hafed et al, 2015;Krauzlis et al, 2018Krauzlis et al, , 2018Rolfs, 2009;Rucci and Poletti, 2015;Wang and Munoz, 2015). Accumulating work suggests that their occurrence is not automatic but rather modulated by the general state of the participant and by the availability of computational capacity, such that microsaccade incidence is reduced under high load (Dalmaso et al, 2017;Gao et al, 2015;Widmann et al, 2014;Yablonski et al, 2017). MSI is an extreme case for such an effect of attentional capture on ocular dynamics, interpreted as reflecting an interruption of ongoing attentional sampling so as to prioritize the processing of a potentially important sensory event.…”

Section: Microsaccadic Inhibition (Msi) Is a Reliable Correlate Of Acmentioning

confidence: 99%

Rapid ocular responses are a robust marker for bottom-up driven auditory salience

Zhao

Yum

Benjamin

et al. 2018

Preprint

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Acknowledgements:We are grateful to Makoto Yoneya (NTT) for initiating the pupillometry setup at UCL. This work was supported by an EC Horizon 2020 grant and a BBSRC international partnering award to MC.Significance statement: Microsaccades are small, rapid, fixational eye movements, measurable with sensitive eye-tracking equipment. We reveal a novel, robust link between microsaccade dynamics and the subjective salience of brief sounds (salience ranking obtained from a large number of participants in an online experiment): Within 300 ms of sound onset, the eyes of naïve, passively listening participants demonstrate different microsaccade patterns as a function of the sound's perceptual salience. These results position the Superior Colliculus (the generator of microsaccades) as an important brain area to investigate in the context of a putative multi-modal salience-hub and establish a robust objective means for quantifying auditory salience, critical in the development of sound-based human machine interfaces. AbstractDespite the prevalent use of alerting sounds in alarms and human-machine interface systems, we have only a rudimentary understanding of what determines auditory saliencethe automatic attraction of attention by sound -and the brain mechanisms which underlie this process. A major roadblock to understanding has been the lack of a robust, objective means of quantifying sound-driven attentional capture. Here we demonstrate that microsaccade inhibitionan oculomotor response arising within 300ms of sound onset -is a robust marker for the salience of brief sounds. Specifically, we show that a 'crowd sourced' (N=911) subjective salience ranking correlated robustly with the superior colliculus (SC) mediated ocular freezing response measured in naïve, passively listening participants (replicated in two groups of N=15 each). More salient sounds evoked earlier microsaccadic inhibition, consistent with a faster orienting response. These results establish that microsaccade-indexed activity within the SC is a practical objective measure for auditory salience.

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Working memory load modulates microsaccadic rate

Cited by 58 publications

References 61 publications

Pupil dilation is sensitive to semantic ambiguity and acoustic degradation

Pupil dilation is sensitive to semantic ambiguity and acoustic degradation

Eye tracking cognitive load using pupil diameter and microsaccades with fixed gaze

Rapid ocular responses are a robust marker for bottom-up driven auditory salience

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