Restricting the field of view to investigate the perceptual spans of pianists

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Abstract
An experiment is reported, which was designed to determine how the perceptual span of pianists varies with developing skill and cognitive load. Eye-movements were recorded as musical phrases were presented through a gaze-contingent window, which contained one beat, two beats, or four beats. In a control condition, the music was presented without a window. The pianists were required to perform three tasks of varying cognitive load: An error-detection task (low load); a sight-reading task (medium load); and a transposition task (high load). Measures taken comprised fixation duration, fixation frequency, saccade length, fixation locations, performance duration, note duration, position of first error, number of errors, and eye-hand span. The results indicate that good and poor sight-readers do not differ in terms of perceptual span. However, good sight-readers were found to have larger eye-hand spans. Furthermore, the results show that increasing cognitive load decreases eye-hand span, but has little effect on perceptual span.