Brains speed up perception by guessing what's next (2019)
This might be tangentially related  - I&#x27;m not sure. I&#x27;ve recently started playing jazz piano, after years of classical piano.<p>Now, I&#x27;m supposed to be a reasonably good sight reader, or at least that&#x27;s what I thought. The improv part of jazz I&#x27;m not good at but I get, but I&#x27;ve also tried playing from transcriptions (Bill Evans in particular), and have found I&#x27;m extremely slow at reading the music.<p>After thinking about it, I suspect it&#x27;s because the music makes no sense to me  so I can&#x27;t guess what&#x27;s coming ( which is what I do with classical music). So while I anticipate with classical music and just confirm after the fact&#x2F;right when the note actually shows up, with Bill Evans I have to think hard and actually confirm everything.<p>My ears help but not much, since &#x27;confirming&#x27; the sound is much harder with jazz than with classical music (it&#x27;s unexpected , so again, there&#x27;s some kind of delay between &#x27;I hear the note&#x27; and &#x27;ok that&#x27;s right&#x27; while there&#x27;s essentially no delay with classical music where my brain is kind of &#x27;primed for acceptance&#x27;