After playing a wrong note while sight-reading, adult learners often stop and go back to correct it. That is useful when learning a piece, but it interrupts the capacities sight-reading is meant to train: the eyes continue gathering notation, the hands act within an established pulse, and the ears assess the result at the same time. Experimental work on sight-reading examines eye movements, eye–hand span, performance duration and errors as parts of one process, rather than treating the task as note-recognition accuracy alone.
Imagine missing an accidental in bar five of an eight-bar piece. Returning immediately breaks the pulse and moves the eyes from incoming information back to material already read. One note may be repaired, but recovery on the next beat is not practised. A better first-pass goal is a manageable slow tempo. If the wrong note does not block continuation, let it pass. If the hands stop, re-enter on the next clear beat rather than restarting the phrase. After finishing, mark bar five and switch to local practice, deciding whether the cause was the key signature, hand position or a fixation that lasted too long.
Accuracy still matters; the point is to separate continuous reading from error correction. Eye-movement studies associate expertise with patterns of forward and backward fixation and with eye–hand coordination, but their samples and materials are limited, so they cannot prescribe one viewing distance for everyone. The practical distinction is simpler: protect the time structure on the first sight-reading pass, then protect the wrong note.
If you practise with <a href="https://apps.apple.com/us/app/scoreflow/id6796205656">ScoreFlow</a>, carry this principle into one short sight-reading pass: continue to the end first, then return to the place that needs to be taken apart.
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.933106/full
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/cognition/articles/10.3389/fcogn.2024.1417011/full
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