BIROn - Birkbeck Institutional Research Online

    Saccades predict and synchronize to visual rhythms irrespective of musical beats

    Batten, Jonathan P. and Smith, Tim J. (2018) Saccades predict and synchronize to visual rhythms irrespective of musical beats. Visual Cognition 26 (9), pp. 695-718. ISSN 1464-0716.

    [img]
    Preview
    Text
    25614.pdf - Published Version of Record
    Available under License Creative Commons Attribution.

    Download (3MB) | Preview

    Abstract

    Music 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.

    Metadata

    Item Type: Article
    Keyword(s) / Subject(s): Experimental and Cognitive Psychology, Arts and Humanities (miscellaneous), Cognitive Neuroscience
    School: Birkbeck Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Science > School of Psychological Sciences
    SWORD Depositor: Mr Joe Tenant
    Depositing User: Mr Joe Tenant
    Date Deposited: 14 Jan 2019 13:19
    Last Modified: 02 Aug 2023 17:47
    URI: https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/25614

    Statistics

    Activity Overview
    6 month trend
    306Downloads
    6 month trend
    370Hits

    Additional statistics are available via IRStats2.

    Archive Staff Only (login required)

    Edit/View Item Edit/View Item