Wurtz, Pascal Mueri, René M. Wiesendanger, Mario 2009-02-10 When sight-reading a piece of music the eyes constantly scan the score slightly ahead of music execution. This separation between reading and acting is commonly termed eye-hand span and can be expressed in two ways: as anticipation in notes or in time. Previous research, predominantly in piano players, found skill-dependent differences of eye-hand span. To date no study has explored visual anticipation in violinists. The present study investigated how structural properties of a piece of music affect the eye-hand span in a group of violinists. To this end eye movements and bow reversals were recorded synchronously while musicians sight-read a piece of music. The results suggest that structural differences of the score are reflected in the eye- hand span in a way similar to skill level. Specifically, the piece with higher complexity was associated with lower anticipation in notes, longer fixation duration and a tendency for more regressive fixations. Anticipation in time, however, remained the same (~1 s) independently of the score played but was correlated with playing tempo. We conclude that the eye-hand span is not only influenced by the experience of the musician, but also by the structure of the score to be played. application/pdf https://folia.unifr.ch/global/documents/301190 https://folia.unifr.ch/documents/301190/files/Exp_Brain_Res_2009_.pdf eng info:eu-repo/semantics/altIdentifier/doi/10.1007/s00221-009-1719-3 info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess License undefined Experimental Brain Research. - 2009, vol. 194, no. 3, p. 445-450 violin playing sight reading music reading eye-hand span eye movements info:eu-repo/classification/udc/57 Sight-reading of violinists: eye movements anticipate the musical flow http://purl.org/coar/resource_type/c_6501