The Early Development of Sight-Reading Skills in Adulthood

Abstract

In this study the effects of skill development on the eye movements of beginning adult sight-readers were examined, focusing on changes in the allocation of visual attention within metrical units as well as in the processing of larger melodic intervals. The participants were future elementary school teachers, taking part in a 9-monthlong music training period. During this period, 15 novice sight-readers' development was observed in three measurements, with 15 amateur musicians functioning as a comparison group. The novices' allocation of fixation time within metrical units gradually approached a pattern demonstrated by the amateurs in which increased sensitivity to metrical divisions was evinced by larger average fixation times on the latter halves of bars. Concerning larger melodic skips in otherwise stepwise melodic contexts, an analysis of fixation times suggested that the novices' visual processing of skips did not proceed in terms of note comparison across the skip but rather through a direct identification of the notational symbols involved. Skill development was seen, then, as increasing fluency of this identification process. These and similar findings may lead to a better understanding of the problems encountered by novice sight-readers and thus to advancements in the pedagogy of music reading.

Learning on the job

“…This expertise effect has been noticed both in silent-reading tasks (Waters & Underwood, 1998;Penttinen, et al, 2013) and during-performance tasks. Considering the latter, experts' advanced skill has appeared both when more and less experienced musicians' performances differ in terms of performance tempo (Truitt, Clifton, Pollatsek, & Rayner, 1997;Gilman & Underwood, 2003;Penttinen & Huovinen, 2011) but also when all performances are alike in a temporal sense and in performance quality (Penttinen, Huovinen, & Ylitalo, 2015). The features of the music notation, too, play a role in the reading, though this side of the process has only rarely been studied and when it has been, often only on a very general level (Madell & Hébert, 2008;Puurtinen, 2018).…”

“…One of the four piano performance tasks applied in Penttinen and Huovinen (2009;2011). In this melody, each of the right-hand fingers could be put on one key (the thumb on the first note), and the performer did not have to move her hand.…”

“…There were, however, some matters which suggested that some of the results should be treated with caution, and we therefore tried to corroborate them later on. After two revisions, the manuscript was accepted for publication (Penttinen & Huovinen, 2011).…”

“…Our eye-tracking investigations about the "looking ahead" in music reading 2.1 Step 1: Focus only on gaze targets(Penttinen & Huovinen, 2009;2011) …”

Machine-extracted eye gaze features

“…Hence, visual perception during sight-reading appears to be closer to image perception than to reading text. Advanced players are able to anticipate musical structures (Wolf, 1976) (Penttinen, 2013), and even to fill in missing chords (Penttinen & Huovinen, 2011). For example, Drai-Zerbib et al (2011) used eye tracking to confirm differences in scanning behavior and in playing accuracy for novice and expert players.…”