Markers of Musical Expertise in a Sight-Reading Task: An Eye-Tracking Study

Classical music pianists of five different conservatory levels, from undergraduate to professional, were tested on a sight-reading task with eye-movement recording. They had to sight read both tonal classical scores that followed the rules specific to Western tonal music, and atonal contemporary scores, which do not follow these rules. This study aimed at determining the extent to which eye movements and musical performance metrics can account for the level of sight-reading expertise. First, the results indicated that with the acquisition of expertise, musicians process visual information more rapidly (increasing their played tempo while decreasing average fixation duration and their number of fixations), more structurally (tending to increase their eye-hand span), and more accurately (increasing their sight-reading accuracy). Second, when they sight read contemporary scores compared to classical scores, musicians decreased their played tempo, tended to be less accurate, increased their number of fixations, and tended to decrease their eye-hand span. Finally, expertise effects were moderated by the type of score. These results suggest (a) that visual perception is progressively shaped through music reading expertise and through domain-specific knowledge acquisition, (b) that tonal-specific cues play a significant role to use an efficient eye-movement behavior and (c) that the benefit conferred by expert prior music-specific knowledge seems to be even greater for sight-reading tonal rather than atonal scores. Our findings are discussed in the light of expert memory theories (long-term working memory theory; Ericsson & Kintsch, 1995; template theory, Gobet & Simon, 1996).