Distractor familiarity reveals the importance of configural information in musical notation

Abstract

The study of perceptual expertise in a visual domain requires the definition of boundaries for the objects that are part of the domain in question. Unlike other well-studied domains, such as faces or words, the domain of musical notation has been lacking in efforts to identify critical features that define the objects of music reading. In the present study, we took advantage of the distractor familiarity effect in visual search. We asked participants to search for a prespecified target note among familiar/ unfamiliar distractor notes when two features of musical notation, dot-stem configuration (the way of connecting the dot and the stem of a note) and connectedness (whether or not the dot and the stem of a note were connected), were manipulated. A participant's level of music-reading expertise predicted the magnitude of the distractor familiarity effect only when the dot-stem configuration was diagnostic for the search. Connectedness did not induce a distractor familiarity effect, regardless of its diagnosticity. Dot-stem configuration is a defining feature of music notes, helping to characterize the boundaries of the domain of music-reading expertise. This work has also improved on the tasks used to quantify expertise in reading musical notation.

Match me if you can: Evidence for a domain-general visual comparison ability

“…In contrast to faces, fingerprint, firearms and artificial-print sensitivity accounted for less variance in our data-where familiarity with these stimuli ranges from unfamiliar to entirely novel. This is consistent with research that suggests there is a shift from domain-general to domainspecific mechanisms with increased perceptual experience in a domain (Chang & Gauthier, 2020Sunday et al, 2018;Wong et al, 2014;Wong & Gauthier, 2010, 2012, and research that links experience and visual comparison performance .…”

Domain-specific and domain-general contributions to reading musical notation

“…The SM tests measure perceptual fluency with musical notation and control stimuli (for similar designs, see Chang & Gauthier, 2020;Wong et al, 2014;Wong et al, 2020;Wong & Gauthier, 2010a, 2010bWong & Wong, 2018). Each trial begins with a 200-ms fixation and then a 500-ms mask, followed by a reference item presented for a varied duration determined by performance on previous trials.…”

“…Musicreading experience is associated with perceptual advantages. It is positively correlated with the speed of encoding music note sequences, relative to nonmusical stimuli such as digits, shapes, and letters (Chang & Gauthier, 2020;Wong et al, 2019;Wong & Wong, 2018). Music-reading experts experience less visual crowding in the periphery for crowded musical notation than control stimuli (Wong & Gauthier, 2012).…”

“…This expertise also seems to come with attentional benefits. Music-reading experts show a greater asymmetry during visual search based on their familiarity with the correct configuration of the features (dots and stems) that make out notes (Chang & Gauthier, 2020). They also show enlarged visual span for identifying English letters, but not Chinese characters or novel symbols, suggesting transfer effects due to similarities in the visual stimulus processing involved (e.g., left-toright reading; Li et al, 2019).…”

“…Perceptual note thresholds were moderately correlated with self-reported music-reading ability and the number of years of musical training. Some studies improved on the operational definition of musical reading expertise by subtracting the perceptual threshold for letters from that of notes (Wong et al, 2014;Wong & Gauthier, 2012), or by regressing the threshold variability for digits and shapes (Chang & Gauthier, 2020). Thus, studies have increasingly raised the bar to ensure that measurements can isolate the domain-specific expertise associated with reading music.…”