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We hypothesize that the fundamental difference between expert and learner musicians is the capacity to efficiently integrate cross-modal information. This capacity might be an index of an expert memory using both auditory and visual cues built during many years of learning and extensive practice. Investigating this issue through an eye-tracking experiment, two groups of musicians, experts and non-experts, were required to report whether a fragment of classical music, successively displayed both auditorily and visually on a computer screen (cross-modal presentation) was same or different. An accent mark, associated on a particular note, was located in a congruent or incongruent way according to musical harmony rules, during the auditory and reading phases. The cross-modal competence of experts was demonstrated by shorter fixation durations and less errors. Accent mark appeared for non-experts as interferences and lead to incorrect judgments. Results are discussed in terms of amodal memory for expert musicians that can be supported within the theoretical framework of Long-Term Working Memory (Ericsson and Kintsch, 1995).

Though eye-tracking is typically a methodology applied in the visual research domain, recent studies suggest its relevance in the context of music research. There exists a community of researchers interested in this kind of research from varied disciplinary backgrounds scattered across the globe. Therefore, in August 2017, an international conference was held at the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics in Frankfurt, Germany, to bring this research community together. The conference was dedicated to the topic of music and eye-tracking, asking the question: what do eye movements, pupil dilation, and blinking activity tell us about musical processing? This special issue is constituted of top-scoring research from the conference and spans a range of music-related topics. From tracking the gaze of performers in musical trios to basic research on how eye movements are affected by background music, the contents of this special issue highlight a variety of experimental approaches and possible applications of eye-tracking in music research.

The eye–hand span (EHS) is the separation between eye position and hand position when sight‐reading music. It can be measured in two ways: in notes (the number of notes between hand and eye; the ‘note index’), or in time (the length of time between fixation and performance; the ‘time index’). The EHSs of amateur and professional pianists were compared while they sight‐read music. The professionals showed significantly larger note indexes than the amateurs (approximately four notes, compared to two notes), and all subjects showed similar variability in the note index. Surprisingly, the different groups of pianists showed almost identical mean time indexes (ca. 1 s), with no significant differences between any of the skill levels. However, professionals did show significantly less variation than the amateurs. The time index was significantly affected by the performance tempo: when fast tempos were imposed on performance, all subjects showed a reduction in the time index (to ca. 0.7 s), and slow tempos increased the time index (to ca. 1.3 s). This means that the length of time that information is stored in the buffer is related to performance tempo rather than ability, but that professionals can fit more information into their buffers.

Studied eye movements of performing music students. Ss were 12 high-scoring and 12 low-scoring graduate students who took the Belwin-Mills Singing Achievement Test. Ss sang 4 progressively difficult single-line melodies, then repeated the melodies after a practice period. The Ss’ eye movements were tracked by a Stanford Research Institute Dual Purkinje Image Eyetracker, which uses a small beam of undetectable infrared light. An apparent difference between reading music and text was noted. Contrary to text readers, skilled music readers (SKMs) used more regressive eye movements than their lesser-skilled counterparts. Also, the mean eye fixation time was considerably longer than the 240 msec average for text. SKMs also tended to look ahead in the notation, then return to the point of performance.

Eye-hand span, i.e., the distance between a performer’s fixation and execution of a note, has been regarded as a decisive indicator of performers’ competence in sight-reading. However, integrated perspectives regarding the relationship between eye-hand span and sight-reading variables have been less discussed. The present study explored the process of sight-reading in terms of three domains and their interrelations. The domain indicators included musical complexity and playing tempo (musical domain), eye-hand span (cognitive domain), and performance accuracy (behavioural domain). Thirty professional pianists sight-read four musical pieces with two different complexities and playing tempi. We measured the participants’ eye-hand span, evaluated their performance accuracy, and divided the participants into three groups according to their performance accuracy values. Interestingly, we found that the eye-hand span did not change solely based on the performance accuracy. In contrast, the relationship between the eye-hand span and performance accuracy changed according to the difficulty of the sight-reading task. Our results demonstrate that the eye-hand span is not a decisive indicator of sight-reading proficiency but is a strategy that can vary according to the difficulty of sight-reading tasks. Thus, proficient sight-readers are performers who are skilled at adjusting their eye-hand span instead of always maintaining an extended span.

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.

In the present study, education majors minoring in music education (n = 24) and music performance majors (n =14) read and performed the original version and melodically altered versions of a simple melody in a given tempo. Eye movements during music reading and piano performances were recorded. Errorless trials were analyzed to explore the adjustments of visual processing in successful performances. The temporal length of the eye–hand span (time between gaze and the performed note) was typically around one second or less. A measure of gaze activity indicated that performers generally inspected two quarter-note areas between two metrical beat onsets. The performance majors operated with shorter fixation durations and applied larger eye–hand spans as well as greater gaze activity than education majors. The latter two measures were generally affected by unexpected melodic alterations and simple rhythmic patterns. The study manifests both the flexibility and limitations of the mechanisms of visual processing in temporally controlled music reading, addressing some of the everyday conceptions about sight-reading by means of systematic research.

The current meta-analysis was conducted on 12 studies comparing the eye movements of expert versus non-expert musicians and attempted to determine which eye movement measures are expertise dependent during music reading. The total dataset of 61 comparisons was divided into four subsets, each concerning one eye-movement variable (i.e., fixation duration, number of fixations, saccade amplitude, and gaze duration). We used a variance estimation method to aggregate the effect sizes. The results support the robust finding of reduced fixation duration in expert musicians (Subset 1, g = -0.72). Due to low statistical power because of limited effect sizes, the results on the number of fixations, saccade amplitude, and gaze duration were not reliable. We conducted meta-regression analyses to determine potential moderators of the effect of expertise on eye movements (i.e., definition of experimental groups, type of musical task performed, type of musical material used or tempo control). Moderator analyses did not yield any reliable results. The need for consistency in the experimental methodology is discussed.

In this review, we focus on the methodological aspects of eye-tracking research in the domain of music, published and/or available between 1994 and 2017, and we identify potentially fruitful next steps to increase coherence and systematicity within this emerging field. We review and discuss choices of musical stimuli, the conditions under which these were performed (i.e. control of performance tempo and music-reading protocols), performer’s level of musical expertise, and handling of performance errors and eye-movement data. We propose that despite a lack of methodological coherence in research to date, careful reflection on earlier methodological choices can help in formulating future research questions and in positioning new work. These steps would represent progress towards a cumulative research tradition, where joint understanding is built by systematic and consistent use of stimuli, research settings and methods of analysis.

Sight reading is a skill which causes difficulty even to some accomplished musicians. The reasons for this are usually not clear to the introspections of musicians themselves, yet there is some evidence of major perceptual differences among musicians which have nothing to do with visual acuity. A study by Bean has shown that short fragments of musical text displayed briefly are more accurately recorded by good sight-readers than by poor sight-readers. He found that good sight-readers could record five notes accurately in any one fixation whereas poor sight-readers could record only two or three notes with the same degree of accuracy. Whilst this finding is important, in itself it sheds little light on the underlying cognitive processes which are responsible for the apparent superiority of good sight-readers in perceiving musical text. The application of an «eye-hand span» technique in the study of this effect was suggested by work of Levin and associates who used the «eye-voice span» as an index of cognitive processes used in reading English text. This technique involves the display of a paragraph of text which subjects are required to read aloud. The eye-voice span (E.V.S.) is defined as the amount of material that subjects report correctly after the text becomes invisible.

In experiments with 21 university students (Exp I) and 7 adult musicians (Exp II), Ss were presented with verbal and musical texts which contained spelling and notational errors, respectively. Measures of detection in normal unpaced reading situations showed that errors were least likely to be detected when they occurred in the middle of words or musical phrases, demonstrating that the highest proportion of inferences occurred at these positions. The apparent similarities of the effects in music and language reading suggest that inference of interior elements usually results from structural rather than visual factors.