Eye Movements and Music Reading: Where Do We Look Next?

Abstract

IN CONTRAST TO SIMILAR RESEARCH IN TEXT reading, research in the eye movements used to read music is relatively undeveloped. Though simpler measures such as the eye-hand span and perceptual span have been evaluated by numerous scholars, more complex phenomena such as context effects have yet to receive proper attention; this is largely the result of a lack of both focus on fine-grained structural properties (i.e., interval size, tonal-harmonic expectation) and a pool of hypotheses and paradigms informed by current models of music perception and cognition. To encourage further, more sophisticated research in eye movements and music reading, the present review discusses recent developments in the field and uses relevant conclusions to build a conceptual springboard for future research.