Anticipation awareness and visual monitoring in reading contemporary music

Abstract

This study examines anticipation and related eye movement measures during music reading with 22 pianists performing four successive executions of an excerpt of Ligeti’s Etude No. 4 “Fanfares”. The pianists were allowed to practice for two minutes between each trial and were divided into two skill groups based on their tempo and accuracy scores. Visual monitoring was assessed by measuring the number and duration of glances at the keyboard (GAK). This assessment led us to introduce a new eye movement measure, the awareness span. The nature of the music reading process was examined by applying a reading span test and a spatial memory test. The results showed that practice and musical structure had a strong effect on performance, eye movement and mixed (eye–hand span and awareness span) measures. Compared to the less expert group, we noted that the expert pianists played faster, with fewer substitutions, larger eye–hand and awareness spans, and fewer and shorter GAK. Across the trials, the pianists were able to adapt the location of GAK within bars and use GAK to create imaginary borders; this is consistent with the findings of Sloboda (1974, 1977), who demonstrated experts’ capacity to adapt their eye–hand span to musical structure. More skilled pianists mobilize their anticipation capabilities more efficiently, underlining a link between the visuospatial sketchpad (Baddeley, 1990) and the music reading anticipation process.