Research Note: Factors Affecting Eye Movements During the Reading of Short Melodies

Abstract

Eighteen subjects silently read six melodies while their eye movements were measured to determine whether factors such as subject expertise, pitch pattern size, or pitch pattern complexity affected the size of their perceptual unit, measured as saccade length. Subjects were divided into three expertise groups based on a pretest. Stimuli were six melodies in equal quarter note rhythms consisting of two pattern sizes (three note/four note) and three complexity levels for each pattern size. Dependent measures were saccade length and fixation duration. Three-note pattern melodies consisted of 19 notes, while four-note pattern melodies consisted of 25 notes. Subjects in all groups were generally found to read note by note. However, factors such as pattern complexity and pattern size did affect the size of their perceptual units. They also tended to read triadic material in larger units than stepwise material especially when that material was composed of root position triads.