The findings of a study published by the PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America) journal has suggested that sight rather than sound plays a significantly more important role in deciding an expert’s opinion about a musical performance.
Sight over sound
The study, entitled ‘Sight over sound in the judgement of music performance’ by Chia-Jung Tsay of the Department of Management Science and Innovation at University College London, has just been published and has come up with some intriguing results.
It found that over 82% of professional musicians cited sound as the most important information required for making a judgement about a musical performance.
Only 25%
However, using the results of 10 actual music competition outcomes, only 25.7% of professional musicians subsequently identified the actual competition winner when using sound only in their decision making process.
Combining both audio and visual information the success rate rose to 29.5%, although using only silent visual information it soared to 47%.
Novice improvements
Meanwhile, 83% of novices also cited sound as the most important information required — with 28.8% identifying the actual winner when using sound only in their decision making process.
Combining both audio and visual information, the success rate rose to 35.4% — although using only silent visual information it soared to 46.4%.
Chance element
It is important to point out however that the element of chance of getting the same outcome as the actual result of the competitions used was calculated at 33% (experiment numbers ranged from 89 to 262 participants and all procedures were approved by the Harvard University Institutional Review Board).
No better?
So are novices better than professionals at judging a musical outcome, or are the professionals no better than getting it right than mere chance, even with sight and sound to help them?
And what explains the huge rise in successes rates when no sound is used – even though the actual outcomes were made by subjective opinion in the first place?
using the results of 10 actual music competition outcomes, only 25.7% of professional musicians subsequently identified the actual competition winner when using sound only in their decision making process4BR
At odds
It seems the outcome according to the report is fairly clear.
As it states: "It may be that regardless of training, knowledge and theories about the meaning of music, experts are just as vulnerable as novices to certain heuristics – ones that may be at odds with what is valued by the field."
The study also stated: "The dominance of visual information emerges to the degree that it is overweighted relative to auditory information, even when sound is consciously valued as the core domain content."
The report ends: "It is unsettling to find – and for musicians not to know – that they themselves relegate the sound of music to the role of noise."
To read the article in full go to:
