Distraction by auditory novelty during reading: Evidence for disruption in saccade planning, but not saccade execution

TL;DR

This study investigates how unexpected auditory stimuli disrupt reading by affecting saccade planning rather than execution, showing rapid influence on eye movement planning during reading tasks.

Contribution

It provides evidence that auditory novelty specifically disrupts saccade planning during reading, supporting the saccadic inhibition hypothesis.

Findings

Novel sounds increase fixation durations when presented during saccade planning phase.

Unexpected sounds do not significantly affect saccade execution.

Distraction occurs rapidly at the saccade planning stage, not during saccade execution.

Abstract

Novel or unexpected sounds that deviate from an otherwise repetitive sequence of the same sound cause behavioural distraction. Recent work has suggested that distraction also occurs during reading as fixation durations increased when a deviant sound was presented at the fixation onset of words. The present study tested the hypothesis that this increase in fixation durations occurs due to saccadic inhibition. This was done by manipulating the temporal onset of sounds relative to the fixation onset of words in the text. If novel sounds cause saccadic inhibition, they should be more distracting when presented during the second half of fixations when saccade programming usually takes place. Participants read single sentences and heard a 120 ms sound when they fixated five target words in the sentence. On most occasions (p= 0.9), the same sine wave tone was presented ("standard"), while on the remaining occasions (p= 0.1) a new sound was presented ("novel"). Critically, sounds were played either during the first half of the fixation (0 ms delay) or during the second half of the fixation (120 ms delay). Consistent with the saccadic inhibition hypothesis, novel sounds led to longer fixation durations in the 120 ms compared to the 0 ms delay condition. However, novel sounds did not generally influence the execution of the subsequent saccade. These results suggest that unexpected sounds have a rapid influence on saccade planning, but not saccade execution.