The Effects of Distracted Inner Hearing on Sight-Reading

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2003 31: 377Psychology of MusicClemens Wöllner, Emma Halfpenny, Stella Ho and Kaori KurosawaThe Effects of Distracted Inner Hearing on Sight-Reading

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The effects of distracted innerhearing on sight-reading

377A R T I C L E

Psychology of Music

Psychology of MusicCopyright ©

Society for Education,Music and Psychology

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C L E M E N S W Ö L L N E R , E M M A H A L F P E N N Y,S T E L L A H O A N D K A O R I K U R O S AWAT H E U N I V E R S I T Y O F S H E F F I E L D

A B S T R A C T The importance of inner hearing in musical sight-reading was investigated with an interference paradigm. In a repeated measures design, 20music students sight-sang two melodies, one of those while listening to distract-ing music. Participants answered aspects of sight-reading ability and strategy inquestionnaires and in semi-structured interviews. The number of mistakes in thesung melodies was calculated; in addition, expert listeners rated continuity/fluency and overall quality. Distracted inner hearing only led to significantlyworse rating results for overall quality. Nevertheless, participants found innerhearing to be significantly more difficult with distracting music, and the numberof mistakes is highly correlated with the experienced difficulty of inner hearing.Possible explanations and implications for further research are discussed.

K E Y W O R D S : auditory representation, interference paradigm, music performance, selec-tive attention, singing

Introduction

Among various musical skills, the relevance of sight-reading can be seen asrather controversial. Though sight-reading seems to be related to generalmusical capacity in students (Henry, 1999; Kostka, 2000), there is no overallagreement as to how important this skill is in expert performers (Gabrielsson,1999: 511). According to expertise theories, sight-reading capacity could beconsidered as a domain-specific skill that is more important for certain kindsof musicians than for others (e.g. more important for piano-accompaniststhan for solo-performers, Ericsson and Lehmann, 1994).

Sight-reading involves a variety of cognitive and behavioural processes.Theoretical knowledge and familiarity with specific kinds of music enhancessight-reading capacity. Skilled sight-readers realize deeper structures within

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the music and code the notational information to musical units (Sloboda,1984; Waters et al., 1998). For that reason some researchers have stated thatmusic reading can already be treated as music perception (Goolsby, 1994b;Sloboda, 1984). Furthermore, sight-reading is dependent on the nature ofthe material; aspects of the printing like good spacing or clarity can be as cru-cial in prima vista performances as aspects of the music itself: ‘good’ melodiesled to better sight-reading results than random ones in experiments(Gabrielsson, 1999: 509, 512; Sloboda, 1978). Thus the performer’s expecta-tions and aspects of familiarity play an important role. Experimental studiesfrequently examine components and factors in sight-reading when compar-ing performers with different levels of musical achievement. Skilled sight-readers outperform less-skilled readers in their perceptual span, and they fix-ate notes further ahead from the point of performance (Goolsby, 1994a,1994b). Results in a series of studies indicate that the time differencebetween music-reading and actual performance (eye–hand span) was about3–4 notes greater in good sight-readers (for a summary see Dunford, 2000;Sloboda, 1974).

Specific difficulties and occurrences of mistakes in sight-reading are close-ly related to musical instruments. For example, aspects of intonation and cor-rect intervals that might be important for singers are less relevant for instru-ments with fixed pitch like the piano (cf. DeFonso, 1994). Thus generaliza-tions of such research findings often appear to be inadequate. McPherson(1994) found that high-school wind-instrumentalists mostly made rhythmmistakes, followed by pitch, articulation, tempo and expression mistakes. Hesuggests that rhythm reading could be the single most important component.Generally, error detection skills as a kind of aural perception might be closelyrelated to sight-reading (Killian, 1991; Sheldon, 1998). Studies of sight-reading with singers have primarily examined contextual and environmentalfactors in sight-reading skills (Demorest and May, 1995; for a review seeGrant and Norris, 1998) or were directly focused on educational issues(Cassidy, 1993; Demorest, 1998).

Few studies have investigated the importance of auditory skills in musicalsight-reading. In his model built upon regression analyses with experimentaldata from wind instrumentalists, Miller (1988) found that rhythmicaural–visual skills as well as cognitive music skills such as note naming orrecognition of symbols, and rhythm pattern recognition skills were the most important predictors of sight-reading capacity. Waters et al. (1998) showedthat auditory representations might play an important role in music reading.In a visual–auditory comparison experiment, subjects were presented withone bar of music and had 10 seconds to study it before the scores wereremoved. Subsequently, the musical patterns were rendered acoustically,either similar or slightly different from the scores. Subjects that belonged to agroup of best sight-reading pianists in this study performed better than inter-mediate and low-scoring groups in detecting differences or similarities

378 Psychology of Music 31(4)



between visual and auditory stimuli. Although these results do not provideevidence for a causal relationship between auditory skills and sight-reading,there seems to be a close link between the two skills as indicated by a multipleregression model. According to this model, auditory representations and con-text-dependent prediction skills are better predictors of good sight-readingachievement than aspects like pattern-recognition skills. Waters et al. (1998)suggest that future research should investigate the role of auditory represen-tations with possible interference paradigms.

The aim of this study was to investigate directly the importance of innerhearing during sight-reading. Following the assumption that inner hearingplays an especially crucial role in, and is closely related to singing, the experi-ment reported in this paper was carried out with singers. The main hypothe-sis is that distractions of inner hearing by acoustical interference will resultin worse sight-reading performance than conditions without interference.

Method

PARTICIPANTS

Twenty participants, consisting of 15 female and 5 male undergraduate andpostgraduate music students aged 19–30 years (M = 22.75 years), took partin the experiment. Four of them studied voice as first subject, six of the par-ticipants possessed absolute pitch. Prior to the experiment, all participantsindicated on 7-point Likert scales how difficult they found sight-reading ingeneral (where 1 is ‘easy’ and 7 is ‘difficult’; M = 3.95, SD = 1.91) and towhat extent sight-reading formed part of their practice (where 1 is ‘never’and 7 is ‘very often’; M = 3.85, SD = 1.93). These plain measures demon-strate that the participants were generally familiar with sight-reading.

PROCEDURE

The experiment was conducted as a repeated-measures design; all participantssang two melodies under different performance conditions, one while listening tointerfering music and one without interference. In order to wholly exclude famil-iarity with the music, two melodies were composed, each consisting of 20 notes,with a similar level of rhythmic and melodic complexity, both melodies were inC-major without accidentals, and in professional quality notation (Figure 1).

Wöllner et al.: Inner hearing in sight-reading 379

F I G U R E 1 The two melodies employed in the experiment.

Melody A

Melody B



The music in the interference performance condition, a recording of aBlues piece by Oscar Peterson (Oscar Peterson and band, 1962) chosen for itsrhythmic and harmonic distraction without establishing a distinct melody,was played to each participant over headphones (Beyer dynamic DT100). Theorder of melody and performance condition were counter-balanced acrossparticipants to exclude effects of order or melody (Table 1).

The experiment was undertaken as single sessions with each participantin a small music studio familiar to him or her. At the beginning of each exper-imental session, the participants were informed about the main focus of theexperiment and were asked to complete the first section of a questionnaire(see Appendix). Subsequently, they were given the score of one of the twomelodies, the starting note from a piano and the tempo of MM 96 (bpm) aspoint of reference, and were asked to prepare the piece in silence for oneminute. After that, the starting note was provided again and the participantssang the melody, which was recorded using a digital audio tape (DAT)recorder (Sony TCD-D7), with a Sony microphone (ECM-909 A). During thesilent reading task as well as during the sight-reading performance, half of allparticipants listened to the interfering music in order to distract inner hear-ing. Following this, the second melody was given with the same task but withthe conditions reversed, such that persons who had performed the first taskwith the distracting music now did so in silence and those who had per-formed it in silence now listened to the blues. Next, aspects of the experiment(e.g. difficulty of inner hearing under the two conditions and overall taskcomplexity, see Appendix) were rated on 7-point Likert scales by the partici-pants in the second part of the questionnaire. At the end in a short semi-structured interview, participants were asked:

1. which strategy or method they employed during the silent reading peri-od; and

2. how difficult the inner hearing or imagination of the melodies under thetwo conditions had been.


TA B L E 1 Counter-balanced design, melodies A and B under the two performance conditions

Interfering InterferingNo. of participant N 1st melody music 2nd melody music

1–5 – 9–13–17 5 A no B yes2–6–10–14–18 5 B no A yes3–7–11–15–19 5 A yes B no4–8–12–16–20 5 B yes A no



Results

Three dependent variables were analysed. The number of mistakes as firstvariable was judged by three of the authors under the following four criteria:each repetition, missing note, rhythm error and pitch error was treated as amistake, while notes following an incorrect note which were either correct inabsolute pitch or correct in the interval did not count as a mistake.Intonation was not judged, and in ambiguous cases the relation of the note inquestion to the melodic context was considered. In two cases, five and sixnotes were missing due to coughing and voice problems, respectively. Herethe percentage of mistakes in the remaining parts of the melody for the spe-cific performance condition was calculated to infer the likelihood of mistakesin the missing part; one estimated mistake was thus added in one of thecases. In general, pitch errors (83%) massively outnumbered rhythmic errors(7%), repetitions (9%), and missing notes (1%). For that reason, separateanalyses of these error categories for the two performance conditions did notappear to be statistically indicated.

To confirm that differences between the two melodies or order of perform-ance condition did not affect the results, two-tailed t-tests were performed,comparing the number of mistakes. No significant differences were found forthe two melodies or for the order of performance condition. Thus the difficul-ty of the melodies was similar for the participants; furthermore whether theyfirst performed the sight-reading task with or without interfering music didnot have an effect.

According to the hypothesis that interfering music would affect innerhearing and consequently cause more sight-reading mistakes, the number ofmistakes under the two performance conditions was compared. Although themean number of mistakes with interfering music is slightly higher (5.25, SD= 4.51) than in the condition without interference (M = 4.40, SD = 4.02),this difference was not significant in a one-tailed t-test (t = 0.81, d.f. = 19, p = .21).

In order to exclude possible effects of absolute pitch or singing experienceon the number of mistakes, all participants with absolute pitch or voice asmain musical subject were left out in two different one-tailed t-tests. Theanalyses revealed no differences between the two performance conditions.

In addition to the number of mistakes, two further variables were analysedin connection with the influence of distracted inner hearing on performanceaspects. Three expert listeners (experienced music lecturers) judged on 7-point Likert scales (a) the continuity/fluency and (b) the overall quality(intonation, expressiveness, confidence) of the sung melodies, which wereplayed to the three judges in a random order, separated into two blocks by thetwo melodies. Pair-wise Pearson’s product-moment correlations between theratings showed highly significant (p < .01) agreements between the experts’ratings for each of the two variables and thus a high inter-rater reliability




(r = .86 and .63). Without distinguishing between the two performance conditions, overall results for the variables ‘continuity/fluency’ (M = 4.73,SD = 1.50) and ‘overall quality’ (M = 3.84, SD = 1.51) differed significantly (t = 7.28, d.f. = 39, p < .01): ratings were better for continuity/fluency thanfor overall quality. Furthermore, there was a highly significant correlationbetween the two variables (r = .87, p < .01).

One-tailed t-tests for each variable in consideration of the two perform-ance conditions were conducted. For the variable ‘continuity/fluency’, nostatistically significant difference was found (t = 1.28, d.f. = 19, p = .11),though ratings were slightly higher for the performance condition withoutinterference (M = 4.95, SD = 1.63) than for the condition with interference(M = 4.52, SD = 1.37). The third dependent variable ‘overall quality’, alsorated by the experts, revealed significant differences between the two per-formance conditions (t = 2.39, d.f. = 19, p = .028); the sung melodies with-out interference achieved a mean rating score of 4.15 (SD = 1.68) and withinterference: 3.53 (SD = 1.28).

An analysis of the questionnaires (see Appendix) revealed that partici-pants experienced inner hearing as significantly more difficult during theinterference condition (two-tailed test, t = 3.80, d.f. = 19, p < .01).Furthermore, the more difficult they found inner hearing the more mistakesthey made in both conditions (Pearson’s r = .45, p < .01). The mean numberof mistakes in both conditions for each participant were correlated with theremaining items of the questionnaire; significant correlations were found for


F I G U R E 2 Number of mistakes (mean and confidence interval) under the two sight-singingperformance conditions.

2020N =

performance condition

with interferencewithout interference

am

ou

nt o

f m

ista

ke

s (

95

% C

I)

8

7

6

5

4

3

2

1

0

Performance condition

Num

ber

of m

ista

kes

(95%

CI)



sight-reading practice (r = –.50, p = .02) and the rated difficulty of melodies (r = .61, p < .01). Other aspects of the questionnaire did not show significantcorrelations with the number of mistakes (Table 2).

The semi-structured interviews at the end of the experimental sessionswere intended to explore aspects of the participants’ strategy and ability ofinner hearing with and without auditory interference. The different answercategories were directly generated from the interviews in comparing andsummarizing the results across participants. An analysis of the frequency ofaspects mentioned in the answers (Table 3) shows that the most prominentstrategy was ‘concentrating on the intervals’. Three participants stated that


F I G U R E 3 Ratings of continuity/fluency and overall quality (mean and confidence interval)under the two performance conditions.

2020 2020N =

performance condition

with interferencewithout interference

ratin

g s

co

res (

95

% C

I)

7.0

6.0

5.0

4.0

3.0

2.0

1.0

continuity/fluency

overall quality

TA B L E 2 Results of the questionnaire (aspects c-f were answered after the experimental task)

Questionnaire aspects N Mean SD

a) Amount of sight-reading practice (1 = never, 7 = very often) 20 3.85* 1.93b) General difficulty of sight-reading (1 = simple, 7 = difficult) 20 3.95 1.91c) Difficulty of the melodies (1 = simple, 7 = difficult) 20 3.25* 2.02d) Difficulty of inner hearing without interference (1 = simple, 7 = diff.) 20 3.15* 1.81e) Difficulty of inner hearing with interference (1 = simple, 7 = difficult) 20 4.95* 2.04f) Complexity of the task overall (1 = simple, 7 = complex) 20 3.50 1.57

* Significant correlations to the mean of mistakes in both performance conditions.

Performance condition

N =

Rat

ing

scor

es (

95%

CI)



they imagined playing the melodies on their main instrument. Overall, someparticipants seemed to employ rather distinct strategies while others did not:75 percent of the participants directly reported that they were able to imag-ine the melodies before singing; 65 percent indicated that they found innerhearing harder with interference, whereas 15 percent (three participants)simply needed to concentrate more or felt no distraction from the interferingmusic at all (10% or two participants).

Discussion

The main results of this study concern the capacity for inner hearing duringthe preparation period and the sight-reading process. It was predicted that adistraction of inner hearing would lead to more mistakes and worse ratings ofthe sung examples than under normal conditions without interference.Surprisingly, participants did not make more mistakes statistically while lis-tening to distracting music. The ratings of expert listeners also indicate nosignificant differences for continuity and fluency. Only the ratings for overallquality were significantly better for the condition without interference thanfor the one with distracted inner hearing; though being significant, these differences were rather small. Thus only the results for one of the threedependent variables support the hypothesis. Generally, distracted inner hear-ing did not affect sight-reading as much as was predicted.

There are three possible explanations for these results that are briefly dis-cussed subsequently:

1. Problems in the experimental design.2. Sight-reading appears to be a relatively stable skill for good and poor

singers, independent of distractions.


TA B L E 3 Frequency distribution of aspects mentioned in the semi-structured interviews (total andpercentage, more than one aspect for each participant possible)

Strategy/method Inner hearing

Aspects Frequency Aspects Frequency

Focus on intervals 11 55% Possible to imagine melodies 15 75%Imagination of sound 4 20% Harder with interference 13 65%Focus on rhythm/beat 3 15% More concentration with 3 15%

interferenceImagination of instruments 3 15% No distraction by interference 2 10%Focus on melodic contour 1 5% More ‘attuned’ with interference 2 10%Consideration of key 1 5% More confident with interference 1 5%No need to prepare because 1 5% Easier to imagine sound with 1 5%

of absolute pitch interferenceNo preparation 1 5% Easier to keep tempo with 1 5%

interference



3. Inner hearing is not affected by interfering music for singers, or is indeedless important in sight-reading than assumed.

First, since effects of order of the experimental conditions have beenexcluded and there are also no significant differences in the number of mis-takes regarding the two melodies, one could only argue that the interferingmusic might not have been distracting enough. Nonetheless, the results ofthe questionnaires clearly indicate that participants experienced inner hear-ing as significantly more difficult with interfering music. Since the erroranalysis was conducted according to strict criteria, and the expert raters lis-tened to the sung melodies in a random order, there do not seem to be obviousproblems in the experimental design.

Second, sight-reading in general could be a skill that is relatively stable andnot easily distracted. Thus, even if participants reported that inner hearingwas more difficult with interfering music, their actual sight-reading perform-ance was not significantly affected. Early studies (for a summary see Sloboda,1984) found that interference conditions did not affect the performances inmusical coding and storage tasks. Sloboda (1984) suggests that: ‘automatedand over-learned tasks are less susceptible to interference than novel tasks’ (p. 228). Furthermore, some participants indicated that they only had to concentrate more on the tasks with interference. Participant 10 reported: ‘Iwas listening to the music a bit, but I was concentrating on what I had to readso it didn’t interfere too much’. Participant 14 stated: ‘I could imagine themelodies during both conditions but you just have to concentrate more withthe music in your ears’. Thus the experimental task in the condition withinterference could simply have required deliberate effort to ignore the dis-tracting music, but did not strongly affect the participants’ sight-singingcapacity. A procedure in which the participants are asked to attend actively tothe distracter might clarify this aspect, as investigated in studies on dividedattention, where two stimuli are presented simultaneously and the partici-pants should follow both of them (cf. Bigand et al., 2000). In contrast, theinterference paradigm employed in the present experiment only requiredselective attention, and indicates that some participants successfully ignoredthe interfering material.

Third, singers were chosen for this study according to the assumption thatinner hearing generally might play a crucial role in singing. It does not seemimplausible that there are different mental representations for one’s own voicein inner hearing than for acoustical stimuli that are not produced by one’sown body. For example, participant 19 reported: ‘I was not listening at all tothe headphones because I knew I had to sing what I was imagining, I was try-ing not to hear any music and I was more in myself than outside myself ’.Further research on mental representations of the singing voice and the rela-tionship between self-produced music and other acoustical information wouldbe necessary to shed light on this possible explanation, not only in connec-




tion with the effects of distracting music. From anecdotal evidence it is well-known that many musicians tend to hum when reading music; so it might bepossible that humming or imagined singing functions as key processes ininner hearing and consequently in constructing mental representations dur-ing silent music reading.

Finally, since the results of this experiment only partially support theassumption that distractions of inner hearing cause worse sight-reading performances, one could argue that inner hearing in general only plays amarginal role in such tasks. Nevertheless, as indicated in the questionnaire,participants made more mistakes in both performance conditions when theyfound inner hearing more difficult, which also seems related to processes ofselective attention. In the semi-structured interviews, they reported differentdistinct strategies for the preparation of the sight-reading task. Participantsmainly focused on the intervals, the sound and the rhythm, and imaginedplaying the melodies on other instruments. These aspects could all reflectcomponents of inner hearing, though further theoretical and empiricalresearch on inner hearing in comparison with previous concepts of mentalrepresentations and auditory images seems necessary.

Little research has been done on musical factors and components in sight-reading with singers. The present study shows that there are different sight-singing strategies, with most participants concentrating on the intervals.Singers with absolute pitch as well as participants with voice as main musicalsubject did not affect the overall results of the experiment, as shown by theseparate analyses of mistakes leaving out one of each of the two groups.Nevertheless, even if those participants did not change the general outcomeof the data analyses, further research on the impact of absolute pitch onsight-reading and comparisons between singers with different levels ofexpertise is necessary. In contrast to previous studies with instrumentalists(McPherson, 1994), pitch errors (83 percent) hugely outnumbered rhythmicerrors (7 percent) in general. Though the occurrence of errors not only mir-rors the instruments used in experiments but also the demands of the musicand the notation, it is clearly shown that singers experienced most difficultieswith correct pitch, which should be considered in sight-reading practice.More research is needed on the significance of inner hearing during sight-reading with other instruments.

In conclusion, the results of this study indicate that distracted inner hear-ing in interference conditions leads to lower overall quality, whereas the num-ber of mistakes and continuity/fluency are not significantly affected.According to the findings of the questionnaire and the semi-structured inter-views, inner hearing is important in sight-reading, although the exactprocesses and components remain to be investigated in more detail. The inter-ference paradigm employed in this study might need to be adapted for futureresearch on inner hearing in sight-reading in order to increase the effective-ness of the interference conditions on this well-learned task. Moreover, fur-




ther research on the mental representation of one’s own voice in relation toacoustical information of the outer world could reveal important aspects ofmusical reading strategies.

A C K N O W L E D G E M E N T S

We are grateful to Eric Clarke for his support during the course of this study and forhelpful comments on a preliminary version of this paper.

R E F E R E N C E S

Bigand, E., McAdams, S. and Forêt, S. (2000) ‘Divided Attention in Music’,International Journal of Psychology 35(6): 270–8.

Cassidy, J. (1993) ‘Effects of Various Sightsinging Strategies on Non-MusiciansMajors’ Pitch Accuracy’, Journal of Research in Music Education 41: 293–302.

DeFonso, L.E. (1994) ‘Visual Context Effects in the Sight-Singing of MusicalIntervals’, in I. Deliège (ed.) Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference of MusicPerception and Cognition, pp. 333–5. Liège: ESCOM, University of Liège.

Demorest, S.M. (1998) ‘Improving Sight-Singing Performance in the ChoralEnsemble: The Effect of Individual Testing’, Journal of Research in Music Education46(2): 182–92.

Demorest, S.M. and May, W.V. (1995) ‘Sight-Singing Instruction in the ChoralEnsemble – Factors Related to Individual Performance’, Journal of Research in MusicEducation 43(2): 156–67.

Dunford, D. (2000) ‘Optometry and Music: A Review of the Literature’, Journal ofOptometric Vision Development 31(2): 76–82.

Ericsson, K.A. and Lehmann, A.C. (1994) ‘The Acquisition of Accompanying (Sight-reading) Skills in Expert Pianists’, in I. Deliège (ed.) Proceedings of the 3rdInternational Conference of Music Perception and Cognition, pp. 337–8. Liège: ESCOM,University of Liège.

Gabrielsson, A. (1999) ‘The Performance of Music’, in D. Deutsch (ed.) The Psychologyof Music, pp. 510–602. San Diego: Academic Press.

Goolsby, T.W. (1994a) ‘Eye Movement in Music Reading: Effects of Reading Ability,Notational Complexity, and Encounters’, Music Perception 12: 77–96.

Goolsby, T.W. (1994b) ‘Profiles of Processing: Eye Movements during Sightreading’,Music Perception 12: 97–123.

Grant, J.W. and Norris, C. (1998) ‘Choral Music Education: A Survey of Research1982–1995’, Bulletin of the Council for Research in Music Education 135: 21–59.

Henry, M.L. (1999) ‘The Development of an Individual Vocal Sight-ReadingInventory’, University of Minnesota Dissertation Abstracts International (online ver-sion).

Killian, J.N. (1991) ‘The Relationship between Sightsinging Accuracy and ErrorDetection in Junior High Singers’, Journal of Research in Music Education 39(3):216–24.

Kostka, M.J. (2000) ‘The Effects of Error-Detection Practice on Keyboard Sight-Reading Achievement of Undergraduate Music Majors’, Journal of Research inMusic Education 48(2): 114–22.

McPherson, G. (1994) ‘Factors and Abilities Influencing Sightreading Skill in Music’,Journal of Research in Music Education 42: 217–31.




Miller, R.E. (1988) ‘Contributions of Selected Music Skills to Music Sight ReadingAchievement and Rehearsed Reading Achievement’, University of Illinois,Dissertation Abstracts International (online version).

Oscar Peterson and band (1962) ‘Blues for Big Scotia’, recorded June 1962 in NewYork City, from the CD: The Essential Oscar Peterson. The Swinger. Verve Records 314517 174–2.

Sheldon, D.A. (1998) ‘Effects of Contextual Sight-Singing and Aural Skills Trainingon Error-Detection Abilities’, Journal of Research in Music Education 46(3): 384–95.

Sloboda, J.A. (1974) ‘The Eye–Hand Span: An Approach to the Study of SightReading’, Psychology of Music 2(2): 4–10.

Sloboda, J.A. (1978) ‘The Psychology of Music Reading’, Psychology of Music 6(2):3–20.

Sloboda, J.A. (1984) ‘Experimental Studies of Music Reading: A Review’, MusicPerception 2(2): 222–36.

Waters, A.J., Townsend, E. and Underwood, G. (1998) ‘Expertise in Musical SightReading: A Study of Pianists’, British Journal of Psychology 89: 123–49.

Appendix: Sight-singing questionnaireThank you for taking part in this experiment. Please complete the following question-naire; section A is to be filled out prior to the experiment and section B is to be filledout after the experiment has taken place:

SECTION APlease circle the appropriate answers where necessary.

(1) AGE: (2) GENDER: Male Female

Sight-reading experience(2) To what extent (how often) does sight-reading form part of your practice?

NEVER 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 VERY OFTEN

(3) How difficult do you find sight-reading in general?

EASY 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 DIFFICULT

(4) Is singing your first study? Yes No

(5) Do you possess absolute pitch? Yes No

SECTION B(6) How difficult did you find the melodies?

SIMPLE 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 DIFFICULT

(7) How difficult was the inner hearing before singing:




a. without music on the headphones?


b. with music on the headphones?


(8) Please indicate how complex you found the task overall:

SIMPLE 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 COMPLEX

C L E M E N S W Ö L L N E R began his academic education at Hanover Academy of Music andDrama and Hanover University (Germany), studying Systematic Musicology, SocialPsychology and Music Education. In 2001–2, he attended the Psychology of Musiccourse at Sheffield University where he achieved an MA (with distinction). His disser-tation was supervised by Eric Clarke and addressed aspects of motion experiences inpopular and classical music. He is a member of the German Society of MusicPsychology and the German Association of Musicology Students.Address: Department of Music, University of Sheffield, Sheffield S10 2TN, UK. [email:[email protected]]

E M M A H A L F P E N N Y gained a BA (Honours) Music degree at the University of Hullwhich enabled her to pursue other academic interests, namely Italian and Psychology.A 10-week Psychology of Music module during the final year provided an overview ofa subject to be further undertaken in the form of an MA at the University of Sheffieldthe following year (2001–2). Emma currently works for Nottinghamshire CountyCouncil’s Art Support Service as an Instrumental Tutor, specializing in clarinet, saxo-phone, flute and recorder.

S T E L L A S Z E - M A N H O began her tertiary education at the Sir Robert Black College ofEducation (Hong Kong), studying Music and English. Then, she graduated from theChinese University of Hong Kong with a Bachelor of Education (Honours) Degree in1996, majoring in Primary Education. In 2001–2, being a recipient of the Li Po ChunOverseas Postgraduate Scholarship, Stella continued her education at the Universityof Sheffield where she achieved an MA in the Psychology of Music. Stella currentlyworks in the education sector in Hong Kong.

K A O R I K U RO S AWA is currently studying for an MPhil in Psychology of Music, super-vised by Dr Jane W. Davidson at the University of Sheffield. She has an MA in thePsychology of Music (2002) from the University of Sheffield, an InternationalBridging Diploma in English and Psychology (2001) from Royal Holloway College, theUniversity of London and a Diploma in Jazz Piano (1985) from the Muse Academy ofMusic (Japan). She is currently a member of the Japanese Society for Music Perceptionand Cognition (JSMPC).




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The Effects of Distracted Inner Hearing on Sight-Reading

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