Modality and Perceptual-Motor Experience Influence the Detection of Temporal Deviations in Tap Dance Sequences (original) (raw)
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Motor synchronization is a critical part of musical performance and listening. Recently, motor control research has described how movements that contain more available degrees of freedom are more accurately timed. Previously, we demonstrated that stick tapping improves perception in a timing detection task, where percussionists greatly outperformed non-percussionists only when tapping along. Since most synchronization studies implement finger tapping to examine simple motor synchronization, here we completed a similar task where percussionists and non-percussionists synchronized using finger tapping; movement with fewer degrees of freedom than stick tapping. Percussionists and non-percussionists listened to an isochronous beat sequence and identified the timing of a probe tone. On half of the trials, they tapped along with their index finger, and on the other half of the trials, they listened without moving prior to making timing judgments. We found that both groups benefited from t...
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For both musicians and music psychologists, beat rate (BPM) has often been regarded as a transparent measure of musical speed or tempo, yet recent research has shown that tempo is more than just BPM. In a previous study, London, Burger, Thompson, and Toiviainen (Acta Psychologica, 164, 70-80, 2016) presented participants with original as well as Btime-stretched^versions of classic R&B songs; time stretching slows down or speeds up a recording without changing its pitch or timbre. In that study we discovered a tempo anchoring effect (TAE): Although relative tempo judgments (original vs. time-stretched versions of the same song) were correct, they were at odds with BPM rates of each stimulus. As previous studies have shown that synchronous movement enhances rhythm perception, we hypothesized that tapping along to the beat of these songs would reduce or eliminate the TAE and increase the salience of the beat rate of each stimulus. In the current study participants were presented with the London et al. (Acta Psychologica, 164, 70-80, 2016) stimuli in nonmovement and movement conditions. We found that although participants were able to make BPM-based tempo judgments of generic drumming patterns, and were able to tap along to the R&B stimuli at the correct beat rates, the TAE persisted in both movement and nonmovement conditions. Thus, contrary to our hypothesis that movement would reduce or eliminate the TAE, we found a disjunction between correctly synchronized motor behavior and tempo judgment. The implications of the tapping-TAE dissociation in the broader context of tempo and rhythm perception are discussed, and further approaches to studying the TAE-tapping dissociation are suggested.
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