Music Rehearsal Increases the Perceptual Span for Notation

Abstract

DESPITE EVIDENCE FOR IMPROVED VISUAL PROCESSING of the printed score among skilled musicians, the effect of music rehearsal on the effective visual field ("perceptual span") for a musical score has never been directly examined. Following 1––20 rehearsals, 11 skilled and 10 less skilled adult musicians reported whether a variant note appeared within a melodic sequence of 3––18 notes, presented onscreen for 200 ms in a tachistoscopic task designed to evaluate the perceptual span. Initially, skilled musicians showed a slightly larger perceptual span for challenging passages (5 notes vs. 4 notes for less skilled musicians). Perceptual spans increased incrementally in both groups, but skill differences in span size disappeared by 20 rehearsals (span of 11 notes). A correlation between improvements in visual perceptual span and performance speed suggests that perceptual learning could underlie early improvements in performance during music rehearsals.

Anticipation awareness and visual monitoring in reading contemporary music

“…A longer fixation in a given activity can be interpreted as an index of deeper cognitive processes (Baccino, 2004;Baccino & Colombi, 2001;Bigand et al, 2010;Goldberg & Kotval, 1999, Goldberg & Schryver, 1995Holmqvist, Holšánová, Barthelson & Lundqvist, 2003;Rayner, 1998). Different factors, such as tempo, phrases and the complexity of the stimuli or the duration of notes, can affect eye movement parameters in music reading (Burman & Booth, 2009;Goolsby, 1989aGoolsby, , 1994Kinsler & Carpenter, 1995;Sloboda, 1984). Eye movement information can also be useful in understanding the anticipatory planning that permits the preparation of events before their execution (Rosenbaum, 1991).…”

The Early Development of Sight-Reading Skills in Adulthood

“…Some studies suggest that the size of the perceptual span in music reading may cover approximately 3 to 5 beats to the right from the point of fixation and that it is not skill-related (Gilman & Underwood, 2003;Truitt, Clifton, Pollatsek, & Rayner, 1997). Others have suggested, though, that perceptual span, too, might be affected by rehearsal (Burman & Booth, 2009). Now, whereas the perceptual span is a common feature of all eye movements-irrelevant of the stimulus-the latter concept, eye-hand span, is especially related to the processing of musical notation during performance.…”

“…The only attempts to examine developmental aspects in eye movements during music reading so far have dealt with more or less experienced musicians' repeated encounters with musical material either in one session (Goolsby, 1994a(Goolsby, , 1994b or in separate practice sessions (Burman & Booth, 2009), whereas the steps from complete illiteracy in musical notation toward some sight-reading proficiency have not yet been addressed from the perspective of attention allocation. For the very early stages of skill development, we still have to rely on scattered information from studies of music education and performance.…”

A Fractured Earth - Sonification and Spatialisation of Seismic Data With Max:msp and Speaker Motion

“…In Goh's study the small number of participants restricts the validity of the results. The most unusual finding -that the subjects did not generally improve playing performance across encounters -is unusual, as it is contrary to the gradual improvement in perceptual span across performances reported by Burman and Booth (2009) and the improvement in musical performance reported by Goolsby (1994a). A possible explanation is that the excerpts were too simple for the participants for any improvement to be recorded, or that the three performances analysed were insufficient to record improvements in performance.…”