Influence of rhythmic contexts on perceived event duration: evidence from behavior and pupillometry

Rhythmic contexts are ubiquitous in our lives, influencing our behavior significantly. Music, dance, speech, and even natural events such as sea waves have an inherent temporal structure, understood as rhythms. The Dynamic Attending Theory (DAT) states that attention can be entrained to external rhythms, enhancing our behavior in terms of preparation (e.g.., faster responses) and/or perception (e.g., better discrimination). Notwithstanding the great influence of the DAT, several studies actually failed to observe entrainment effects in tasks measuring either accuracy or response speed. The present study aims to further explore this issue by trying to replicate a seminal work by McAuley and Fromboluti (2014), which confirmed the predictions of the DAT using an oddball auditory paradigm. Extending this original study, we will also incorporate eye-tracking measures of attention as well as measures of musical skills and spontaneous motor tempo to assess the role of individual differences in the supposed entrainment effects. Overall, we expect to replicate the original study by McAuley and Fromboluti (2014) and to provide complementary evidence about rhythmic entrainment that takes into account interindividual differences. Keywords Dynamic Attending Theory, rhythm, oscillation cycles, foreperiod effect, timing, eye-tracker, pupillometry