A Cognitive Model of Sight-Reading as the Eye-Ear-Hand Collaborative Processes

Abstract

Musical performance is a real-world activity that is amenable to behavioral and cognitive fractionation and investigations into its physiological basis. This thesis concerns one basic but important musical ability－sight-reading. Because sight-reading involves complex visual, auditory, and motor processing tasks that occur simultaneously, an investigation of the cognitive mechanisms underlying it, is likely to contribute a fundamental understanding of these processes both within and outside the musical field. This thesis aims to examine the neurological and physiological mechanisms of sight-reading from theoretical perspectives and explore factors that can influence these mechanisms, based on empirical evidence. Understanding the neurological mechanisms of sight-reading can identify particular brain areas that integrate the visual, motor, and auditory domains. Exploring the physiological mechanisms of sight-reading focuses on eye movements and can provide empirical evidence for the neurological specificity of sight-reading. This thesis additionally deals with the various factors that engage sight-reading mechanisms and examines the influence of several variables on sight-reading proficiency, considering both subjective and objective factors. Finally, the present thesis presents a series of experiments to point out and characterize technical and musical limitations, which were lacking in previous studies, and test a modified paradigm. In particular, this thesis proposes a new measurement of musical complexity and objectively investigates its influence on sight-reading proficiency through a behavioral experiment. Furthermore, this thesis examines a correlation between performance accuracy and the eye-hand span, which represents the physiological mechanisms of sight-reading, and investigates the influence of variable factors on the mechanisms through a physiological experiment.