Pupil diameter as an indicator of sound pair familiarity after statistically structured auditory sequence

© 2024. The Author(s)..

Inspired by recent findings in the visual domain, we investigated whether the stimulus-evoked pupil dilation reflects temporal statistical regularities in sequences of auditory stimuli. We conducted two preregistered pupillometry experiments (experiment 1, n = 30, 21 females; experiment 2, n = 31, 22 females). In both experiments, human participants listened to sequences of spoken vowels in two conditions. In the first condition, the stimuli were presented in a random order and, in the second condition, the same stimuli were presented in a sequence structured in pairs. The second experiment replicated the first experiment with a modified timing and number of stimuli presented and without participants being informed about any sequence structure. The sound-evoked pupil dilation during a subsequent familiarity task indicated that participants learned the auditory vowel pairs of the structured condition. However, pupil diameter during the structured sequence did not differ according to the statistical regularity of the pair structure. This contrasts with similar visual studies, emphasizing the susceptibility of pupil effects during statistically structured sequences to experimental design settings in the auditory domain. In sum, our findings suggest that pupil diameter may serve as an indicator of sound pair familiarity but does not invariably respond to task-irrelevant transition probabilities of auditory sequences.

Medienart:

E-Artikel

Erscheinungsjahr:

2024

Erschienen:

2024

Enthalten in:

Zur Gesamtaufnahme - volume:14

Enthalten in:

Scientific reports - 14(2024), 1 vom: 16. Apr., Seite 8739

Sprache:

Englisch

Beteiligte Personen:

Becker, Janika [VerfasserIn]
Korn, Christoph W [VerfasserIn]
Blank, Helen [VerfasserIn]

Links:

Volltext

Themen:

Journal Article

Anmerkungen:

Date Completed 18.04.2024

Date Revised 25.04.2024

published: Electronic

Citation Status MEDLINE

doi:

10.1038/s41598-024-59302-1

funding:

Förderinstitution / Projekttitel:

PPN (Katalog-ID):

NLM371166829