The encoding process of note groups in piano sight-reading among beginner music students

In this study, we examined the sight-reading skill from the perspective of "expertise science," which is a relatively new field of psychology (Ericsson & Pool, 2018). Our main aim is to examine how music students of different skill levels encode musical notes. In this context, we examined whether the accuracy and reaction time of the participants differed according to the skill level (experts, amateurs) and modality type of musical stimuli (visual, auditory, audio-visual). Fifty-two music students aged 10–16 who were conservatory or amateur piano students participated in the study. We presented musical stimuli with "same" or "different" versions in visual, auditory, and audio-visual modalities in the recognition test and compared participants' accuracy and reaction time. We used 2 (skill level) x 3 (general modality type) mixed ANOVA and 2 (skill level) x 7 (modality type) mixed ANOVA. According to the ANOVA results, the participants' reaction time significantly differed depending on the modality type of the musical stimuli. In contrast, the participants' accuracy significantly differed depending on skill level, modality type of the musical stimuli, and the interaction of these variables. In general, musical stimuli presented in the auditory and audio-visual modalities were recognized faster and better than musical stimuli presented visually. The accuracy of the expert students was better than amateur students. While there was no significant difference in accuracy between auditory and audio-visual modalities in expert students, musical stimuli presented in the auditory modality were recognized better than those presented audio-visual modality in amateur students. Based on these results, we can conclude that the expert students encode the musical notes in auditory and audio-visual modalities. In contrast, the amateur students encode the musical notes in the auditory modality.