Saccadic Eye-Movements Suppress Visual Mental Imagery and Partly Reduce Emotional Response During Music Listening

Abstract

Visual mental imagery has been proposed to be an underlying mechanism of music-induced emotion, yet very little is known about the phenomenon due to its ephemeral nature. The present study utilised a saccadic eye-movement task designed to suppress visual imagery during music listening. Thirty-five participants took part in Distractor (eye-movement) and Control (blank screen) conditions, and reported the prevalence, control, and vividness of their visual imagery, and felt emotion ratings using the GEMS-9 in response to short excerpts of film music. The results show that the eye-movement task was highly effective in reducing ratings for prevalence and vividness of visual imagery, and for one GEMS item, Nostalgia, but was not successful in reducing control of imagery or the remaining GEMS items in response to the music. This represents a novel approach to understanding the potentially causal role of visual imagery on music-induced emotion, on which future research can build by considering the attentional mechanisms that a distraction task may pose during music-induced visual imagery formation.