Frans Mossberg

Eye movements and reading comprehension while listening to preferred and non-preferred study music

In the present study 24 university students read four different texts in four conditions: (1) while listening to music they preferred to listen to while studying; (2) while listening to music they did not prefer to listen to while studying; (3) while listening to a recording of noise from a café; and finally (4) in silence. After each text they took a reading-comprehension test. Eye movement data were recorded for all participants in all conditions. A main effect for the reading-comprehension scores revealed that the participants scored significantly lower after they had been listening to the non-preferred music while reading, compared with reading in silence. No significant effects were found between the other conditions. No significant differences between conditions were found for the traditional eye movement measures in reading (fixation duration, saccadic amplitude, regressions, and first-pass and second-pass reading time). It is suggested that this result is a consequence of participants not being aware that their reading processes are disrupted by a non-preferred musical background. They do not make the necessary changes to the processes involved in reading required to compensate for increased cognitive load. The results are discussed in relation to study/reading habits, extraversion, arousal and working memory capacity.

Getting it together—Interdisciplinary sound environment research

The Sound Environment Center at Lund university is an interdisciplinary center created to coordinate research on sound and soundscape issues and is known to be the first of its kind worldwide. Ranging from acoustics to medicine, psychology, and cognitive sciences, as well as humanities like musicology and linguistics, soundscape research adresses many interdependent areas and touches upon health as well as philosophical, aesthetic, and technical issues. To get a holistic comprehension, these perspectives need to be synchronized. Therefore, the center has an interdisciplinary board and a mission to study sound environments from multidisciplinary perspectives. Focus lies on research and contact between researchers. The center has external funding for larger research collaborations on topics such as teachers voice strain and rooms acoustics, health effects of combined exposure to noise and airborne particles, cognition, and sound exposure. In addition to initiating research projects, the center arranges symp...

The impact of sound presentations on executive control: Evidence from eye movements

To examine the influence on performance of sound presentation considered more or less disturbing, distracting, and intrusive, an antisaccade task was used to assess executive control over reflexive eye movements. By examining the latency and proportion of correct eye movements in eight sound presentations for 32 participants (15 female), the effect of disturbance from sound was measured. The only effect found for latency was a significant increase during the Mozart violin concerto, suggesting an unconscious speed–accuracy tradeoff. Participants inhibited reflexive eye movements in favour of correct responses, which were marginally better than the silent control condition. The mean number of correctly launched saccades was significantly lower during three sound presentations which were all social in nature, namely playing children, crying baby, and babble noise. These were also classified as highly disturbing by participants. This suggests that certain sounds can have a large effect on executive control. Finally, the sound presentation with children playing affected females significantly more negatively than males, as seen in lower mean numbers of correctly launched saccades.