Piano Music Sight Reading: The Transfer of Expertise to Non-Musical Domains and the Effect of Visual and Auditory Interference on Performance.

摘要

Music sight reading is an extensively studied area of expertise. Past research has established that the eye movement (EM) patterns of expert and non-expert music sight-readers reflect those of text readers; that Working Memory Capacity (WMC) and that engagement in long periods of deliberate practice (DP) are all characteristic of sight-reading expertise. The effect of altering visual parameters (blur, contrast and size), and semantic information (spacing and punctuation), is well documented for text-reading, but less so for music sight-reading. Research into the transfer of such expertise into non-musical domains still has many unanswered questions; as are the effects that other sensory input might have on the performance of a music-related visual processing tasks. The thesis examines these issues in relation to expert and non-expert music sight-readers and, where possible, musicians and non-musicians. The key features of expertise were initially explored – speed of performance, WMC and amount of DP – and their relationship to a specific level of piano music sight-reading ability. These features were all found to be significantly superior in those who could successfully perform a 6th Grade AMEB sight-reading assessment piece. Having thereby assigned expertise, the effects on EMs were measured between the expert and non-expert sight-readers when the blur, contrast and size features of the score were manipulated, the metronome introduced and the notation visually disrupted. Sight-reading expertise was further explored in relation to non-musical forms of sensory processing: auditory tone frequency and modulation discrimination, visual and perceptual spans, visual working memory, word reading speed, basic visual search and visual search using music-like targets with congruent or non-congruent simultaneous auditory interference. The findings were discussed within the DP and innate abilities frameworks. In conclusion, expert music sight-readers frequently exhibit enhanced visual processing skills not only beyond those of non-musicians, but beyond those of non-expert music sight-readers in both related and non-related domains and show distinct effects in response to auditory interference. These are new aspects of the cognitive processing repertoire of expert music sight-readers and has implications for music educators and the use of music as remediation for other visual processing deficiencies.