An Eye-tracking Study of The Cross-Modal Influence of Musical Stimuli on Visual Attention
Abstract
switching speed of attention are core factors that determine task performance and safety levels. As a common acoustic stimulus, music has
extensive and enduring effects on attentional processes. This study adopted eye-tracking technology to explore the influence of different music
types on attention. Three types of music with the same melody were selected: the music with lyric, the music without lyric, the reverberant
music with lyric. Visual search tasks were used to measure participants' attentional focus under different musical conditions. Three groups of
participants completed four sets of high-difficulty visual search tasks and four sets of low-difficulty visual search tasks under one of the three
auditory backgrounds. Post-experiment data analysis indicated no significant difference in performance among the three groups in the highdifficulty tasks. However, in the low-difficulty tasks, the reverberant music group showed significantly higher Total Fixation Duration, Fixation Counts, and Time to First Fixation. This reveals the reverberant group had longer task completion time compared to the other two groups.
The eye-tracking technology could record high-precision physiological activities which is free from motor contamination. By leveraging eyetracking technology this study overcomes the limitation of traditional reaction time research, where cognitive processing and motor execution
are conflated. It provides a new chain of evidence for cognitive load theory with clearer stages, purer data, and higher precision. Furthermore,
the findings extend the classic "low-load processing - high-load shielding" hypothesis to the auditory-visual cross-modal ecological scenarios.
Additionally, the study reveals that the reverberation sound effect has negative impact on visual search efficiency. Hence, this sound effect
should be used cautiously in scenarios requiring high levels of attention. This research also establishes safety boundaries for the design of auditory environments in situations, such as learning and driving.
Keywords
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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.70711/rcha.v4i1.8896
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