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Staying offbeat: Sensorimotor syncopation with structured and unstructured auditory sequences

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Abstract

Three experiments investigated whether adding metric (higher-order, periodic) structure to tone sequences stabilizes syncopated finger tapping. Participants tapped in antiphase with metronomic tone sequences in which accents—produced by sounding two tones simultaneously—occurred regularly every two, three, or four tones (metric), occurred unpredictably (irregular), occurred on every tone (heavy beat), or were absent (light beat). Tap timing variability, although commensurate with metric and light beat sequences, was lower with metric than with heavy beat and irregular sequences even when the instructions specified using metric grouping in all conditions. Higher-order periodic fluctuations (delays) in tap timing—found only in metric conditions—were associated with low overall tap timing variability, suggesting that a regularly applied, meter-based phase-resetting mechanism stabilizes syncopation.

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Notes

  1. Six additional potential participants (five of whom had no musical training) indicated that they were interested in taking part in the experiment, but were unable to do so after experiencing difficulty with sensorimotor syncopation, even at a very slow rate (beat interval = 800 ms).

  2. Due to a peculiarity of MAX, sequences were presented 2.4% faster than specified in the program, and tap timing was recorded 2.4% slower than it actually occurred. Actual timing values can be obtained by multiplying the reported values by .967. Apart from this constant scaling factor, timing in MAX is accurate to within 1 ms.

  3. Error rates are reported here without the arcsine transformation. Note that this error rate is quite low considering that fast rates were set to be 9% faster than individual participants’ subjective limits, indicating that these limits were rather conservative. The magnitude of the asynchrony for erroneous taps was not analyzed due to the low error rates.

  4. Note that this is a different measure to lag 1 autocorrelation in ITIs, which is conventionally examined in studies of self-paced (metronome absent) tapping, and is typically found to be negative (see Vorberg & Wing, 1996; Wing, 2002). Also note that drift arises during sensorimotor syncopation because the task involves making taps simultaneously with imagined events (IOI midpoints) rather than with physical events in the pacing sequence. However, drift during syncopation is typically not as large in magnitude as drift during self-paced tapping due to the presence of the pacing sequence.

  5. De-trending the time series did not seem like the best option because inspection of the data revealed that the most prominent component of the drift was non-monotonic (i.e., gradual slowing down and quickening across runs of taps within trials) rather than monotonic (i.e., slowing down or quickening within a trial). Although it has been shown that monotonic (linear) trends can be removed without introducing statistical artifacts into the time series, it remains an “open question” whether this holds for non-monotonic trends (Vorberg & Wing, 1996, p. 199).

  6. To address whether accentuation modulates tap timing indirectly by affecting tapping force, we computed correlations between asynchronies and MIDI velocities (measured on a scale—ranging from 0 to 127—that is, monotonically related to how hard the percussion pad is struck) in each trial from the metric conditions. Velocity and asynchrony are essentially uncorrelated (mean r = .08, n.s.), which suggests that accentuation affects timing directly.

  7. The procedure for measuring syncopation thresholds involved finding the maximum rate at which the participant could produce a consecutive series of 24 syncopated taps that fell within the 26–74% region of each IOI defined by the pacing sequence tones (50% representing the midpoint). After starting at a slow rate selected by the participant, the rate was increased from trial to trial in 4% steps until one or more errors occurred in three consecutive trials. At this point the rate was decreased by 4% and then progressively increased by 1% until another three consecutive error trials occurred. The rate of the final error-free trial was defined as the threshold. The participant completed this procedure with metric (duple, triple, quadruple), irregular (irregular-2, irregular-3, irregular-4), light beat, and heavy beat sequences. The thresholds from these conditions (eight in total) were then averaged to yield the participant’s overall syncopation threshold.

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Acknowledgements

This research was conducted during Peter Keller’s appointment as a post-doctoral fellow at Haskins Laboratories and was supported by National Institutes of Health grants MH-51230, awarded to Bruno Repp, and DC-03663, awarded to Elliot Saltzman. We thank Herbert Heuer and two anonymous reviewers for valuable comments on an earlier version of the manuscript.

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  1. Haskins Laboratories, New Haven, CT, USA

    Peter E. Keller & Bruno H. Repp

  2. Department of Psychology, Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Amalienstrasse 33, 80799, Munich, Germany

    Peter E. Keller

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Correspondence to Peter E. Keller.

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Keller, P.E., Repp, B.H. Staying offbeat: Sensorimotor syncopation with structured and unstructured auditory sequences. Psychological Research 69, 292–309 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-004-0182-9

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