TY  - JOUR
A1  - Lange, Elke B.
A1  - Zweck, Fabian
A1  - Sinn, Petra
T1  - Microsaccade-rate indicates absorption by music listening
JF  - Consciousness and cognition
N2  - The power of music is a literary topos, which can be attributed to intense and personally significant experiences, one of them being the state of absorption. Such phenomenal states are difficult to grasp objectively. We investigated the state of musical absorption by using eye tracking. We utilized a load related definition of state absorption: multimodal resources are committed to create a unified representation of music. Resource allocation was measured indirectly by microsaccade rate, known to indicate cognitive processing load. We showed in Exp. 1 that microsaccade rate also indicates state absorption. Hence, there is cross-modal coupling between an auditory aesthetic experience and fixational eye movements. When removing the fixational stimulus in Exp. 2, saccades are no longer generated upon visual input and the cross modal coupling disappeared. Results are interpreted in favor of the load hypothesis of micro saccade rate and against the assumption of general slowing by state absorption.
KW  - Microsaccades
KW  - Fixational eye movements
KW  - Absorption
KW  - Music
KW  - Aesthetics
Y1  - 2017
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2017.07.009
SN  - 1053-8100
SN  - 1090-2376
VL  - 55
SP  - 59
EP  - 78
PB  - Elsevier
CY  - San Diego
ER  -