2026-04-30T06:56:19Zhttps://repisalud.isciii.es/rest/oai/request
oai:repisalud.isciii.es:20.500.12105/237982024-11-29T05:33:45Zcom_20.500.12105_15322com_20.500.12105_2051col_20.500.12105_16967
Repisalud author Vasilev, Martin R author Lowman, Michael author Bills, Katherine author Parmentier, Fabrice BR author Kirkby, Julie A 2024-10-09T06:36:32Z 2024-10-09T06:36:32Z 2023-07-14 Vasilev MR, Lowman M, Bills K, Parmentier FBR, Kirkby JA. Unexpected sounds inhibit the movement of the eyes during reading and letter scanning. Psychophysiology. 2023 Jul 14. 10.1111/psyp.14389 1540-5958 Psychophysiology https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.13003/19351 37448357 L641801230 2-s2.0-85165176285 https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12105/23798 1027469200001 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. eng Unexpected sounds inhibit the movement of the eyes during reading and letter scanning research article