Sight-singing is prevalent in aural skill classes, where learners differ in experience and cognitive abilities. In this research, we investigated whether musical experience, level of study, and working memory capacity (WMC) can predict sight-singing performance and if there is a correlation between WMC and performance among some subgroups of participants. We hypothesized that more experienced students and those with a higher WMC might sight-sing better than those with less experience and lesser WMC. We also hypothesized that the relationship between WMC and sight-singing performance would be more salient for less experienced and less proficient sight-singers. We surveyed 56 subjects about their experience with music, assessed their WMC, and evaluated their performance on a short sight-singing task. The results showed that the age when students began learning music could predict sight-singing performance independently from the number of years of experience and the educational level, suggesting a possible developmental component to sight-singing skill. We also found a negative relationship between WMC and pitch score in the low-performing group and between rhythm and pitch score, suggesting that pitch and rhythm are processed differently. Teachers should be aware of how students’ backgrounds might be related to performance and encourage them to develop strong automated skills, such as reading music or singing basic tonal patterns.

视唱在听觉技能课程中很普遍，学习者的经验和认知能力各不相同。在这项研究中，我们调查了音乐经验、学习水平和工作记忆容量 (WMC) 是否可以预测视唱表现，以及 WMC 和某些参与者亚组的表现之间是否存在相关性。我们假设经验丰富的学生和 WMC 较高的学生可能会比经验较少和 WMC 较低的学生视唱得更好。我们还假设，对于经验不足和熟练程度较低的视唱者来说，WMC 和视唱表演之间的关系会更加明显。我们调查了 56 名受试者的音乐体验，评估了他们的 WMC，并评估了他们在短视唱任务中的表现。结果表明，学生开始学习音乐的年龄可以独立于经验年限和教育水平来预测视唱表现，这表明视唱技能可能存在发展成分。我们还发现，在表现不佳的组中，WMC 与音高得分之间以及节奏与音高得分之间存在负相关关系，这表明音高和节奏的处理方式不同。教师应了解学生的背景与表演的关系，并鼓励他们发展强大的自动化技能，例如读乐谱或演唱基本的音调模式。