Does cognitive load differ among sight-singers? An exploratory study using pupillometry and interviews

Abstract

Sight-singing is challenging for many music students, yet they can experience various difficulties with this task. To explore how cognitive load (CL) might differ among students, we combined two approaches: 1) a quantitative approach using pupil size diameter-a psychophysiological indicator of CL-to see whether CL differed as a function of sight-singing achievement and experience; 2) a qualitative approach to learn student's challenges when sight-singing and verify how such challenges reflect on sight-singing scores. We asked 56 post-secondary music students to complete a musical background questionnaire and to complete a sight-singing exercise, while an eye-tracker gathered data about their pupil size. After that, we interviewed them about the difficulties they experienced. The results revealed that CL did not vary between sight-singing performance and musical experience levels. However, we found a tendency suggesting that students with the highest intonation scores and lowest intonation scores both experienced a lower CL. On the contrary, CL was higher for students with average intonation scores. Interviews also revealed that many students experienced information overload while sight-singing, and students who shared such perception obtained, on average, lower sight-singing scores. Future studies should include qualitative data collection to deepen our understanding of learners' experiences.

Pupil dilation as cognitive load measure in instructional videos on complex chemical representations

“…In the case of the control condition without signaling, ECL was higher and pupil dilation was lower, indicating that cognitive resources might be occupied by a visuospatial searching process. Without appropriate support, cognitive resources may have been overloaded, leading to participants' disengagement with the instruction, which is reflected in smaller pupil size and thus less mental effort (Peavler, 1974;Krejtz et al, 2018;van der Wel and van Steenbergen, 2018). In the case of the dynamic signaling, ECL was lower and pupil dilation was higher, and learning gains were increased, suggesting that the additional cognitive effort indicated by pupil dilation was a result of productive mental effort that led to these increased learning gains (Mitra et al, 2017;van der Wel and van Steenbergen, 2018).…”

“…Shechter and Share (2021) conducted word recognition experiments, finding significantly larger relative changes in pupil size for stimuli associated with higher cognitive effort. Another way to investigate pupil dilations may be to triangulate other sources of data, such as gaze data (e.g., Klingner, 2010;Karch et al, 2019;Miller and Unsworth, 2020), spatio-temporal sensory cues (e.g., Sharma et al, 2021), interviews (e.g., Pomerleau-Turcotte et al, 2021), motivational manipulation by task-switching (da Silva Castanheira et al, 2021), microsaccadic responses (Krejtz et al, 2020), and through probes mid-task (Franklin et al, 2013) to try to understand the underlying cognitive process reflected in the pupil dilation.…”

Eye Tracking for STEM Education Research: New Perspectives

“…Shechter and Share (2021) conducted word recognition experiments, finding significantly larger relative changes in pupil size for stimuli associated with higher cognitive effort. Another way to investigate pupil dilations may be to triangulate other sources of data, such as gaze data (e.g., Klingner, 2010;Karch et al, 2019;Miller and Unsworth, 2020), spatio-temporal sensory cues (e.g., , interviews (e.g., Pomerleau-Turcotte et al, 2021), motivational manipulation by task-switching (da Silva Castanheira et al, 2021), microsaccadic responses (Krejtz et al, 2020), and through probes mid-task (Franklin et al, 2013) to try to understand the underlying cognitive process reflected in the pupil dilation.…”