Profiles of Processing: Eye Movements during Sightreading

1994 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 97-123 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas W. Goolsby
Keyword(s):  
Eye Movement ◽  
Music Perception ◽  
Performance Support ◽  
Music Notation ◽  
Skilled Reader ◽  
Perceptual Span ◽  
Visual Detail ◽  
Musical Perception ◽  
Visual Notation ◽  
Processing Language

Temporal and sequential components of the eye movement used by a skilled and a less-skilled sightreader were used to construct six profiles of processing. Each subject read three melodies of varying levels of concentration of visual detail. The profiles indicates the order, duration, and location of each fixation while the subjects sightread the melodies. Results indicate that music readers do not fixate on note stems or the bar lines that connect eighth notes when sightreading. The less-skilled music reader progressed through the melody virtually note-by-note using long fixations, whereas the skilled sightreader directed fixations to all areas of the notation (using more regressions than the less-skilled reader) to perform the music accurately. Results support earlier findings that skilled sightreaders look farther ahead in the notation, then back to the point of performance (Goolsby, 1994), and have a larger perceptual span than less-skilled sightreaders. Findings support Slobodans (1984) contention that music reading (i. e., sightreading) is indeed music perception, because music notation is processed before performance. Support was found for Sloboda's (1977, 1984, 1985, 1988) hypotheses on the effects of physical and structural boundaries on visual musical perception. The profiles indicate a number of differences between music perception from processing visual notation and perception resulting from language reading. These differences include: (1) opposite trends in the control of eye movement (i. e., the better music reader fixates in blank areas of the visual stimuli and not directly on each item of the information that was performed), (2) a perceptual span that is vertical as well as horizontal, (3) more eye movement associated with the better reader, and (4) greater attention used for processing language than for music, although the latter task requires an "exact realization."

scholarly journals Music perception: No strong evidence to reject innate biases

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick E. Savage ◽  
Thomas E. Currie
Keyword(s):  
Music Perception ◽  
Cognitive Biases ◽  
Group Performance ◽  
Global Analysis ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
South American ◽  
Musical Perception ◽  
Indigenous Group ◽  
Nature And Nurture ◽  
Cultural Evolutionary

McDermott et al. (Nature 535, 547–550; 2016) used a cross-cultural experiment to show that an isolated South American indigenous group, the Tsimane', exhibit indifference to musical dissonance. The study acts as an important counterweight to common beliefs that musical preferences reflect universal, mathematically based harmonic relationships that are biologically determined by low-level perceptual mechanisms. While we applaud their cross-cultural approach, the limited number of populations studied (n=5) makes it difficult to draw strong conclusions about causal processes. In particular, the conclusion that consonance is thus "unlikely to reflect innate biases" seems too strong, as innateness does not require complete universality. Exceptions are always found in any phenomenon as complex as human music. Indeed, our own global analysis of traditional music found dozens of aspects of music that were common cross-culturally, but none that were absolutely universal without exception (Savage et al. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 112, 8987-8992; 2015). We showed a consistent tendency to avoid dissonance, yet we still found many examples of sustained dissonance in Western and non-Western music (e.g., Eastern European harvest songs, Papua New Guinean lullabies).Such trends and exceptions are not necessarily indicative of the degree of innateness of aspects of music (which, like other domains of culture, likely reflects some combination of nature and nurture). For example, humans and other animals display an innate aversion to bitter and sour foods, but these can be overridden by cultural conventions and developmental experience (Chandrashekar et al. Nature 444, 288-293; 2006). Diversity in musical perception and production could emerge in the context of weak cognitive biases or relaxation in selective pressures (such as the unusual absence of group performance among the Tsimane'). Broader cross-cultural studies of both perception and production of music and other aspects of human behavior (including cultural evolutionary and developmental frameworks) will be needed to clarify the roles of nature and nurture in shaping human diversity.

scholarly journals Musical Sophistication and Speech Auditory-Motor Coupling: Easy Tests for Quick Answers

2022 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johanna M. Rimmele ◽  
Pius Kern ◽  
Christina Lubinus ◽  
Klaus Frieler ◽  
David Poeppel ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Motor Cortex ◽  
Coupling Strength ◽  
Music Perception ◽  
Musical Training ◽  
Spontaneous Speech ◽  
Indirect Measure ◽  
Musical Perception ◽  
German Speaking ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
Highly Correlated

Musical training enhances auditory-motor cortex coupling, which in turn facilitates music and speech perception. How tightly the temporal processing of music and speech are intertwined is a topic of current research. We investigated the relationship between musical sophistication (Goldsmiths Musical Sophistication index, Gold-MSI) and spontaneous speech-to-speech synchronization behavior as an indirect measure of speech auditory-motor cortex coupling strength. In a group of participants (n = 196), we tested whether the outcome of the spontaneous speech-to-speech synchronization test (SSS-test) can be inferred from self-reported musical sophistication. Participants were classified as high (HIGHs) or low (LOWs) synchronizers according to the SSS-test. HIGHs scored higher than LOWs on all Gold-MSI subscales (General Score, Active Engagement, Musical Perception, Musical Training, Singing Skills), but the Emotional Attachment scale. More specifically, compared to a previously reported German-speaking sample, HIGHs overall scored higher and LOWs lower. Compared to an estimated distribution of the English-speaking general population, our sample overall scored lower, with the scores of LOWs significantly differing from the normal distribution, with scores in the ∼30th percentile. While HIGHs more often reported musical training compared to LOWs, the distribution of training instruments did not vary across groups. Importantly, even after the highly correlated subscores of the Gold-MSI were decorrelated, particularly the subscales Musical Perception and Musical Training allowed to infer the speech-to-speech synchronization behavior. The differential effects of musical perception and training were observed, with training predicting audio-motor synchronization in both groups, but perception only in the HIGHs. Our findings suggest that speech auditory-motor cortex coupling strength can be inferred from training and perceptual aspects of musical sophistication, suggesting shared mechanisms involved in speech and music perception.

Predicting Individual Differences in the Perceptual Span and Eye Movement Behavior During Reading

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick Plummer ◽  
Matthew J. Abbott ◽  
Keith Rayner
Keyword(s):  
Individual Differences ◽  
Eye Movement ◽  
Movement Behavior ◽  
Perceptual Span

scholarly journals Synesthesia and music perception

2015 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 16-23 ◽  
Author(s):  
Guilherme Francisco F. Bragança ◽  
João Gabriel Marques Fonseca ◽  
Paulo Caramelli
Keyword(s):  
Music Perception ◽  
Present Review ◽  
Musical Meaning ◽  
Neural Basis ◽  
Developmental Factors ◽  
Physiological Processes ◽  
Musical Perception ◽  
The Cross

The present review examined the cross-modal association of sensations and their relationship to musical perception. Initially, the study focuses on synesthesia, its definition, incidence, forms, and genetic and developmental factors. The theories of the neural basis of synesthesia were also addressed by comparing theories emphasizing the anatomical aspect against others reinforcing the importance of physiological processes. Secondly, cross-modal sensory associations, their role in perception, and relationship to synesthesia were analyzed. We propose the existence of a lower, unconscious degree of synesthesia in non-synesthetes. This latent synesthesia (without explicit sensory manifestations) would be functional, aiding the construction of abstract associations between different perceptual fields. Musical meaning might be constructed largely by synesthetic processes, where the sensory associations from sound activate memories, images, and emotions.

Eye movement evidence for defocused attention in dysphoria — A perceptual span analysis

2012 ◽  
Vol 85 (1) ◽  
pp. 129-133 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aneta Brzezicka ◽  
Izabela Krejtz ◽  
Ulrich von Hecker ◽  
Jochen Laubrock
Keyword(s):  
Eye Movement ◽  
Perceptual Span ◽  
Defocused Attention

scholarly journals Inferences about eye movement control from the perceptual span in reading

1986 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 123-130 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Pollatsek ◽  
Keith Rayner ◽  
David A. Balota
Keyword(s):  
Eye Movement ◽  
Movement Control ◽  
Perceptual Span ◽  
Eye Movement Control

scholarly journals Eye movements in developing readers: From basic research to classroom application.

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (7) ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexandra Spichtig ◽  
Christian Vorstius ◽  
Ronan Reilly ◽  
Jochen Laubrock
Keyword(s):  
Eye Movements ◽  
Eye Movement ◽  
Reading Ability ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Basic Research ◽  
Video Stream ◽  
Reading Education ◽  
Reading Behaviors ◽  
Perceptual Span ◽  
Increased Risk

Video stream: https://vimeo.com/362645755 Eye-movement recording has made it possible to achieve a detailed understanding of oculomotor and cognitive behavior during reading and of changes in this behavior across the stages of reading development. Given that many students struggle to attain even basic reading skills, a logical extension of eye-movement research involves its applications in both the diagnostic and instructional areas of reading education. The focus of this symposium is on eye-movement research with potential implications for reading education. Christian Vorstius will review results from a large-scale longitudinal study that examined the development of spatial parameters in fixation patterns within three cohorts, ranging from elementary to early middle school, discussing an early development window and its potential influences on reading ability and orthography. Ronan Reilly and Xi Fan will present longitudinal data related to developmental changes in reading-related eye movements in Chinese. Their findings are indicative of increasing sensitivity to lexical predictability and sentence coherence. The authors suggest that delays in the emergence of these reading behaviors may signal early an increased risk of reading difficulty. Jochen Laubrock’s presentation will focus on perceptual span development and explore dimensions of this phenomenon with potential educational implications, such as the modulation of perceptual span in relation to cognitive load, as well as preview effects during oral and silent reading --and while reading comic books.

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