Music sight-reading expertise, visually disrupted score and eye movements

Previous studies have shown that performance at a defined level of music sight-reading for pianists (6th Grade) is predictive of eye movement patterns (Waters, Townsend, & Underwood, 1998) and that such patterns resemble those of text reading experts (Furneaux & Land, 1999, Sloboda, 1974, Truitt, Clifton, Pollatsek, & Rayner, 1997; Wolf, 1976). These patterns include fewer fixations of shorter duration and fewer regressive saccades that allows for more efficient processing of visual information per fixation. However, little is known about how expertise might affect eye movement patterns when the score has been visually disrupted using notational features that are unexpected or outside conventional presentation. The current project examined the effect of altering features of the music score on eye movement patterns of expert and non-expert music sight-readers. Participants read, by sight, specifically composed musical excerpts. These pieces were then re-presented with the bar-lines removed, disrupted spacing and unpredictable beaming directions. Fixation and saccade characteristics were measured and compared between the two performances. It was expected that expert music sight-readers would be most affected when the score was disrupted as they would be less capable of grouping notes into familiar, single units for efficient visual processing. Expert sight-readers performed significantly faster than non-experts in both conditions: p<0.0001. Saccadic latency increased significantly for experts in the disrupted condition: p=0.03. Non-experts increased slightly, but not significantly. This suggests that the disruption of visual expectation was sufficient to cause a lengthening of saccade programming in the experts - an indication of interference with the 'chunking' process. The resultant EM patterns for the non-experts demonstrated heightened non-expert behaviours: increased fixations of shorter duration.