Call for Abstracts

We are very pleased to announce this call for abstract submissions for the second conference on “Music and Eye-tracking.” After the success of the first meeting in 2017, and the postponement of our planned 2020 conference due to the pandemic, we again welcome participation from researchers in music studies, neuroscience, and psychology, with the interest of using eye-tracking (measuring saccadic, pupil, or blinking activity) to yield insights about music processing, performance, and engagement. Additionally, we invite related basic auditory research and studies on visual-auditory interactions. Research applying eye-tracking in combination with other methods (e.g., motion tracking, EEG, etc.) is also welcome. The conference will be held July 7–8, 2022 at the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, and virtually. We are looking forward to a physical “in-person” conference and will also offer a “virtual” online component.

With this conference, we hope to provide a platform for expert researchers at the intersection of music and eye-tracking to communicate with one another, to foster and enrich discussions about methods, and to continue refining models and theories of musical processing with insights from eye-tracking. We encourage researchers from other areas of cognition and emotion studies to join the interest in this complex question of investigation: what do eye movements, pupil dilation, and blinking activity tell us about musical processing?  

The program of the first Conference on Music & Eye-Tracking can be found here.

Please also see the Special Issue on Music & Eye-Tracking in the Journal of Eye Movement Research which resulted from the first conference. 

Keynote Speaker

Dr. Adriana Zekveld
“The pupil response to auditory stimuli: relevant factors.” 

Among an array of measures used to assess effort and stress, pupillometry and cardiovascular measures are the most common ones. The pupil dilation response has been used as a proxy measure to study mental effort allocation since the seminal work of Kahneman and Beatty in the last century. Pupillometry has been applied in research to music processing to study auditory attention, engagement, salience, deviant detection, surprise, emotional processing and attractiveness. Pupillometry has also gained interest in the assessment of the mental effort required to process speech in difficult listening conditions. The pupil dilation response is sensitive to changes in intelligibility, the type of background sound (including music) and hearing acuity. Furthermore, the motivation and engagement of the listener influence the pupil response during speech perception. For example, social factors and monetary reward affect the  pupil dilation. This presentation provides an overview of the application of pupillometry to assess speech perception. I will discuss the correspondence with its application in research on music processing, the feasibility and value of the method, as well as limitations and potential confounders. Furthermore, the relationship with cardiovascular measures will be discussed.

Submission Instructions

Please use our conference management website, Indico, to submit an abstract.

The abstract submission deadline is: February 11, 2022. 

Selection Criteria

All submissions will be peer-reviewed by the Program Committee, with oversight from the Scientific Board. 

Registration Fees

There is no fee to attend the conference. Please note that registration is prioritized for participants contributing with a talk or poster presentation. Because of size limitations at our venue, as well as current corona regulations, seats are limited for in-person participants. Please register by 1 June 2022 for the possibility to attend in-person. There is always the possibility to attend remotely online. The registration form is available here: indico.ae.mpg.de

Travel/Accommodation

Travel expenses and accommodation have to be booked and paid separately by workshop participants. Please check whether you will need a visa for Germany! Applying for and obtaining the visa is your own responsibility. 

Recommendations regarding transportation and accommodation forthcoming.