Early attraction in temporally controlled sight reading of music

Abstract

A music reader has to “look ahead” from the notes currently being played—this has usually been called the Eye-Hand Span. Given the restrictions on processing time due to tempo and meter, the Early Attraction Hypothesis suggests that sight readers are likely to locally increase the span of looking ahead in the face of complex upcoming symbols (or symbol relationships). We argue that such stimulus-driven effects on looking ahead are best studied using a measure of Eye-Time Span (ETS) which redefines looking ahead as the metrical distance between the position of a fixation in the score and another position that corresponds to the point of metrical time at fixation onset. In two experiments of temporally controlled sight reading, musicians read simple stepwise melodies that were interspersed with larger intervallic skips, supposed to create points of higher melodic complexity (and visual salience) at the notes following the skips. The results support both Early Attraction (lengthening of looking ahead) and Distant Attraction (lengthening of incoming saccades) in the face of relative melodic complexity. Notably, such effects also occurred on the notes preceding the nominally complex ones. The results suggest that saccadic control in music reading depends on temporal restrictions as well as on local variations in stimulus complexity.

Eye on Music Reading: A Methodological Review of Studies from 1994 to 2017

“…This finding aligns with the reported actions of experts in some other domains (Gegenfurtner, Lehtinen, & Säljö, 2011). Expertise may also result in an increase in how much the eyes are ahead of the ongoing performance (Madell & Hébert, 2008;Huovinen, et al, 2018). This distance, called the eye-hand span, has been suggested to average roughly around 1 s (Furneaux & Land, 1999;Penttinen et al, 2015).…”

“…This approach is very fitting for descriptive purposes-that is, when pointing out general pattern-like differences between reading by experts and novices, or when piloting and experimenting for future studies. In the Experimental Approach (Table 2b), focus has been on the eye-movement effects of violating melodic and harmonic expectations (Ahken et al, 2012;Penttinen et al, 2015;Hadley et al, 2018), unusual visual layout (Arthur et al, 2016; see also Ahken et al, 2012), or on the very basic reading mechanisms explored with extremely simple musical tasks (Kinsler & Carpenter, 1995;Truitt et al, 1997;Penttinen & Huovinen, 2011;Huovinen et al, 2018). With simple tasks, the leading idea has been to keep some factors of the stimuli constant and only vary one: for instance, Kinsler and Carpenter (1995) only asked their performers to tap rhythms, whereas Penttinen and Huovinen (2011) and Huovinen et al (2018) created melodies where all notes were of the same duration (see also Truitt et al, 1997).…”

“…This systematic commentary of tasks applied in prior research would aid in gradually moving toward the use of more complex musical stimuli. The work of Kinsler and Carpenter (1995) on rhythm reading or of Penttinen and Huovinen (2011) and Huovinen et al (2018) on reading of large melodic intervals (i.e. large "skips" between two consecutive pitch heights) may serve as useful points of departure for building an understanding of the effects of these music-structural features on eye movement.…”

“…Furneaux and Land (1999) as well as Rosemann et al (2016) reported in their studies (both with nine pianists) that, compared to a faster performance tempo, a slower tempo increased the time lag between fixating on a note and subsequently performing it. Thus, differences in tempo allow some performers more time to fixate upcoming music (see also Huovinen et al, 2018), making it difficult to compare eye-hand span and related measures across participants.…”

“…To roughly summarize recent published work on music reading, eye movements are affected both by 'top-down' and 'bottom-up' factors (e.g. Wurtz, Mueri, & Wiesendanger, 2009;Ahken, Comeau, Hébert, & Balasubramaniam, 2012;Drai-Zerbib, Baccino, & Bigand, 2012;Arthur, et al, 2016;Rosenmann, Altenmüller, & Fahle, 2016;Huovinen, Ylitalo, & Puurtinen, 2018). Not surprisingly, then, reading depends in practice both on 'who is reading' and 'what is being read'.…”