Abstract
The present study was designed to investigate the effects of interest and auditory modality on the spontaneous eyeblink during watching music video films. Twenty female participants were recruited from the university population and instructed to watch two kinds of the music video stimuli. One stimulus consisted of a popular music scene played by a Japanese famous rock-music group (high interest stimulus) and another stimulus consisted of a music scene played by an unfamiliar artist (low interest stimulus). In addition, each of these visual stimuli was presented with and without sounds (i.e., the sound-added condition and the sound-deprived condition, respectively). The spontaneous eyeblink rates significantly decreased in the high interest stimulus as a function of the degree of interest. On the other hand, the spontaneous eyeblink rates significantly increased especially when the low interest stimulus was presented without music. The results indicate that the spontaneous eyeblink rates are influenced by the interaction between degree of interest and music addition.
