Skip to main content

Unexpected sounds inhibit the movement of the eyes during reading and letter scanning.

Vasilev, M. R, Lowman, M., Bills, K., Parmentier, F. B. R. and Kirkby, J. A, 2023. Unexpected sounds inhibit the movement of the eyes during reading and letter scanning. Psychophysiology, 60 (12), e14389.

Full text available as:

[img]
Preview
PDF (OPEN ACCESS ARTICLE)
Psychophysiology - 2023 - Vasilev - Unexpected sounds inhibit the movement of the eyes during reading and letter scanning (1).pdf - Published Version
Available under License Creative Commons Attribution.

1MB
[img] PDF (OPEN ACCESS ARTICLE)
Psychophysiology - 2023 - Vasilev - Unexpected sounds inhibit the movement of the eyes during reading and letter scanning.pdf - Published Version
Restricted to Repository staff only
Available under License Creative Commons Attribution.

1MB

DOI: 10.1111/psyp.14389

Abstract

Novel sounds that unexpectedly deviate from a repetitive sound sequence are well known to cause distraction. Such unexpected sounds have also been shown to cause global motor inhibition, suggesting that they trigger a neurophysiological response aimed at stopping ongoing actions. Recently, evidence from eye movements has suggested that unexpected sounds also temporarily pause the movements of the eyes during reading, though it is unclear if this effect is due to inhibition of oculomotor planning or inhibition of language processes. Here, we sought to distinguish between these two possibilities by comparing a natural reading task to a letter scanning task that involves similar oculomotor demands to reading, but no higher level lexical processing. Participants either read sentences for comprehension or scanned letter strings of these sentences for the letter 'o' in three auditory conditions: silence, standard, and novel sounds. The results showed that novel sounds were equally distracting in both tasks, suggesting that they generally inhibit ongoing oculomotor processes independent of lexical processing. These results suggest that novel sounds may have a global suppressive effect on eye-movement control.

Item Type:Article
ISSN:0048-5772
Uncontrolled Keywords:deviance distraction; eye movements; novel sounds; reading; saccadic inhibition
Group:Faculty of Science & Technology
ID Code:38815
Deposited By: Symplectic RT2
Deposited On:27 Jul 2023 11:00
Last Modified:30 May 2024 06:47

Downloads

Downloads per month over past year

More statistics for this item...
Repository Staff Only -