Restricting the field of view to investigate the perceptual spans of pianists

Abstract

An experiment is reported, which was designed to determine how the perceptual span of pianists varies with developing skill and cognitive load. Eye-movements were recorded as musical phrases were presented through a gaze-contingent window, which contained one beat, two beats, or four beats. In a control condition, the music was presented without a window. The pianists were required to perform three tasks of varying cognitive load: An error-detection task (low load); a sight-reading task (medium load); and a transposition task (high load). Measures taken comprised fixation duration, fixation frequency, saccade length, fixation locations, performance duration, note duration, position of first error, number of errors, and eye-hand span. The results indicate that good and poor sight-readers do not differ in terms of perceptual span. However, good sight-readers were found to have larger eye-hand spans. Furthermore, the results show that increasing cognitive load decreases eye-hand span, but has little effect on perceptual span.