The Effects of Distracted Inner Hearing on Sight-Reading
The importance of inner hearing in musical sight-reading was investigated with an interference paradigm. In a repeated measures design, 20 music students sight-sang two melodies, one of those while listening to distracting music. Participants answered aspects of sight-reading ability and strategy in questionnaires and in semi-structured interviews. The number of mistakes in the sung melodies was calculated; in addition, expert listeners rated continuity/fluency and overall quality. Distracted inner hearing only led to significantly worse rating results for overall quality. Nevertheless, participants found inner hearing to be significantly more difficult with distracting music, and the number of mistakes is highly correlated with the experienced difficulty of inner hearing. Possible explanations and implications for further research are discussed.