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

Intelligent Standalone Eye Blinking Monitoring System for Computer Users

Purpose: Working on computers for long hours has become a regular task for millions of people around the world. This has led to the increase of eye and vision issues related to prolonged computer use, known as computer vision syndrome (CVS). A main contributor to CVS caused by dry eyes is the reduction of blinking rates. In this pilot study, an intelligent, standalone eye blinking monitoring system to promote healthier blinking behaviors for computer users was developed using components that are affordable and easily available in the market. Methods: The developed eye blinking monitoring system used a camera to track blinking rates and operated audible, visual and tactile alarm modes to induce blinks. The hypothesis in this study is that the developed eye blinking monitoring system would increase eye blinks for a computer user. To test this hypothesis, the developed system was evaluated on 20 subjects. Results: The eye blinking monitoring system detected blinks with high accuracy (95.9%). The observed spontaneous eye blinking rate was 43.1 ± 14.7 blinks/min (mean ± standard deviation). Eye blinking rates significantly decreased when the subjects were watching movie trailers (25.2 ± 11.9 blinks/min; Wilcoxon signed rank test; p<0.001) and reading articles (24.2 ± 12.1 blinks/min; p<0.001) on a computer. The blinking monitoring system with the alarm function turned on showed an increase in blinking rates (28.2 ± 12.1 blinks/min) compared to blinking rates without the alarm function (25.2 ± 11.9 blinks/min; p=0.09; Cohen's effect size d=0.25) when the subjects were watching movie trailers. Conclusions: The developed blinking monitoring system was able to detect blinking with high accuracy and induce blinking with a personalized alarm function. Further work is needed to refine the study design and evaluate the clinical impact of the system. This work is an advancement towards the development of a profound technological solution for preventing CVS.

Gaze behavior reveals automaticity and attention allocation during music teaching vs. observing

In a unique case-study approach in which I served as both the research participant and the experimenter, I wore eye-tracking glasses while teaching a brief music lesson to two university students learning trumpet, then approximately two weeks later, I watched a video of the lesson and tracked my gaze again. To investigate unconscious perceptual processes engaged during music teaching, I compared my attention allocation while teaching to my attention allocation during selfobservation. My gaze behavior while teaching revealed a high level of automaticity regarding lesson sequencing and allocation of attention. Strategic moment-to-moment shifts in attention between the two students occurred entirely below my conscious awareness, yet post hoc analyses revealed precisely timed changes that were related to momentary goals. While watching the video, absent the demands of behavioral interaction and momentary decision-making, I directed more sustained attention to both students than I had while teaching. These results reveal important features of "teacher thinking" that are not directly observable or typically construed as conscious behavior. That this component of teaching practice does not involve volitional control suggests that teachers' descriptions of their thinking may not reveal to novices important elements of pedagogical expertise.

Eye blinking, musical processing, and subjective states-A methods account

Affective sciences often make use of self-reports to assess subjective states. Seeking a more implicit measure for states and emotions, our study explored spontaneous eye blinking during music listening. However, blinking is understudied in the context of research on subjective states. Therefore, a second goal was to explore different ways of analyzing blink activity recorded from infra-red eye trackers, using two additional data sets from earlier studies differing in blinking and viewing instructions. We first replicate the effect of increased blink rates during music listening in comparison with silence and show that the effect is not related to changes in self-reported valence, arousal, or to specific musical features. Interestingly, but in contrast, felt absorption reduced participants' blinking. The instruction to inhibit blinking did not change results. From a methodological perspective, we make suggestions about how to define blinks from data loss periods recorded by eye trackers and report a data-driven outlier rejection procedure and its efficiency for subject-mean analyses, as well as trial-based analyses. We ran a variety of mixed effects models that differed in how trials without blinking were treated. The main results largely converged across accounts. The broad consistency of results across different experiments, outlier treatments, and statistical models demonstrates the reliability of the reported effects. As recordings of data loss periods come for free when interested in eye movements or pupillometry, we encourage researchers to pay attention to blink activity and contribute to the further understanding of the relation between blinking, subjective states, and cognitive processing.

How do ethnically congruent music and meal drive food choices?

Playing ethnic music in restaurants increases consumer experience. Studies show, furthermore, that ethnic congruence of music and food affects food selection but not the liking of customers. An eye-tracking study was completed with 104 participants to uncover if there is an effect of ethnic music on selecting ethnic foods. German, Hungarian, Italian, and Spanish ethnic music was played while participants choose congruent starters, main dishes, and desserts. Results show that visual attention decreased when any background music was played. However, when played, the highest visual attention was recorded during Spanish music. Similarly, the most visual attention was recorded on Spanish dishes. Food choice frequencies showed no differences among the four nations. However, after aggregating German-Hungarian and Italian-Spanish music and dishes, it turned out that participants chose congruent music and food. Choice predictions were also completed on data with and without ethnic music. The performance of prediction models significantly increased when music was played. These findings highlight a clear link between music and food choices, and that music helped participants complete their choices and decide faster.

How Soundtracks Shape What We See: Analyzing the Influence of Music on Visual Scenes Through Self-Assessment, Eye Tracking, and Pupillometry

This article presents two studies that deepen the theme of how soundtracks shape our interpretation of audiovisuals. Embracing a multivariate perspective, Study 1 (N = 118) demonstrated, through an online between-subjects experiment, that two different music scores (melancholic vs. anxious) deeply affected the interpretations of an unknown movie scene in terms of empathy felt toward the main character, impressions of his personality, plot anticipations, and perception of the environment of the scene. With the melancholic music, participants felt empathy toward the character, viewing him as more agreeable and introverted, more oriented to memories than to decisions, while perceiving the environment as cozier. An almost opposite pattern emerged with the anxious music. In Study 2 (N = 92), we replicated the experiment in our lab but with the addition of eye-tracking and pupillometric measurements. Results of Study 1 were largely replicated; moreover, we proved that the anxious score, by increasing the participants' vigilance and state of alert (wider pupil dilation), favored greater attention to minor details, as in the case of another character who was very hard to be noticed (more time spent on his figure). Results highlight the pervasive nature of the influence of music within the process of interpretation of visual scenes.

The application of eye-tracking in music research

Though eye-tracking is typically a methodology applied in the visual research domain, recent studies suggest its relevance in the context of music research. There exists a communityof researchers interested in this kind of research from varied disciplinary backgrounds scattered across the globe. Therefore, in August 2017, an international conference was held at the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics in Frankfurt, Germany,to bring this research community together. The conference was dedicated to the topic of music and eye-tracking, asking the question: what do eye movements, pupil dilation, and blinking activity tell us about musical processing? This special issue is constituted of top-scoring research from the conference and spans a range of music-related topics. From tracking the gaze of performers in musical trios to basic research on how eye movements are affected by background music, the contents of this special issue highlight a variety of experimental approaches and possible applications of eye-tracking in music research.