The Impact of Instrument-Specific Musical Training on Rhythm Perception and Production

Long-term music instruction is partially associated with the development of socioemotional skills

This study aims to investigate the development of pitch-matching, rhythmic entrainment, and socioemotional skills in children who received formal music instruction and other non-music based after school programs. Eighty-three children, averaging 6.81 years old at baseline, were enrolled in either a music, sports, or no after-school program and followed over four years. The music program involved formal and systematic instruction in music theory, instrumental technique, and performance. Most control participants had no music education; however, in some instances, participants received minimal music education at school or at church. Musical development was measured using a pitch-matching and drumming-based rhythmic entrainment task. Sharing behavior was measured using a variation of the dictator game, and empathy was assessed using three different assessments: the Index of Empathy for Children and Adolescence (trait empathy), the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test (theory of mind), and a Fiction Emotion-Matching task (state empathy). Results revealed no time-related associations in pitch-matching ability; however, formal music instruction improved pitch-matching relative to controls. On the contrary, improvements in rhythmic entrainment were best explained by age-related changes rather than music instruction. This study also found limited support for a positive association between formal music instruction and socioemotional skills. That is, individuals with formal music instruction exhibited improved emotion-matching relative to those with sports training. In terms of general socioemotional development, children's trait-level affective empathy did not improve over time, while sharing, theory of mind, and state empathy did. Additionally, pitch-matching and rhythmic entrainment did not reliably predict any socioemotional measures, with associations being trivial to small. While formal music instruction benefitted pitch-matching ability and emotion-matching to an audiovisual stimulus, it was not a significant predictor of rhythmic entrainment or broader socioemotional development. These findings suggest that the transfer of music training may be most evident in near or similar domains.

The contribution of auditory imagery and visual rhythm perception to sensorimotor synchronization with external and imagined rhythm

Sensorimotor synchronization (SMS) refers to the temporal coordination of an external stimulus with movement. Our previous work revealed that while SMS with visual flashing patterns was less consistent than with auditory or tactile patterns, it was still evident in a sample of nonmusicians. Although previous studies have speculated the potential role of auditory imagery, its contribution to visual SMS performance is not well quantified. Utilizing a synchronization-continuation finger-tapping task with a visual stimulus that included implied motion, we aimed to examine how participants' imagery ability, musicality, and rhythm perception affected SMS performance. We quantified participants' SMS consistency in synchronization (with visual cues) and continuation (without visual cues) phases. Participants also performed a perception task assessing their ability to detect temporal perturbations in the visual rhythm and completed musical ability and imagery questionnaires. Our linear regression model for SMS consistency included the trial phase, self-reported auditory imagery control and musicality, and visual rhythm perception as predictors. Significant effects of trial phase and auditory imagery scores on SMS consistency suggested that participants performed SMS more consistently while the guiding visual stimulus was present and that the higher one's self-reported auditory imagery ability, the better their SMS when continuing with unguided rhythm. One's visual rhythm perception accuracy significantly correlated with SMS consistency during the synchronization phase, and there was no correlation between rhythm perception and auditory imagery control. Overall, our results suggested relatively independent contributions of auditory imagery and visual rhythm perception to SMS with visual rhythm. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Evaluation of physiological response and synchronisation errors during synchronous and pseudosynchronous stimulation trials

Rhythm perception and synchronisation is musical ability with neural basis defined as the ability to perceive rhythm in music and synchronise body movements with it. The study aimed to check the errors of synchronisation and physiological response as a reaction of the subjects to metrorhythmic stimuli of synchronous and pseudosynchronous stimulation (synchronisation with an externally controlled rhythm, but in reality controlled or produced tone by tapping) Nineteen subjects without diagnosed motor disorders participated in the study. Two tests were performed, where the electromyography signal and reaction time were recorded using the NORAXON system. In addition, physiological signals such as electrodermal activity and blood volume pulse were measured using the Empatica E4. Study 1 consisted of adapting the finger tapping test in pseudosynchrony with a given metrorhythmic stimulus with a selection of preferred, choices of decreasing and increasing tempo. Study 2 consisted of metrorhythmic synchronisation during the heel stomping test. Numerous correlations and statistically significant parameters were found between the response of the subjects with respect to their musical education, musical and sports activities. Most of the differentiating characteristics shown evidence of some group division in the undertaking of musical activities. The use of detailed analyses of synchronisation errors can contribute to the development of methods to improve the rehabilitation process of subjects with motor dysfunction, and this will contribute to the development of an expert system that considers personalised musical preferences.

Musical Beat Perception Skills of Autistic and Neurotypical Children

Many autistic children show musical interests and good musical skills including pitch and melodic memory. Autistic children may also perceive temporal regularities in music such as the primary beat underlying the rhythmic structure of music given some work showing preserved rhythm processing in the context of basic, nonverbal auditory stimuli. The temporal regularity and prediction of musical beats can potentially serve as an excellent framework for building skills in non-musical areas of growth for autistic children. We examine if autistic children are perceptually sensitive to the primary beat of music by comparing the musical beat perception skills of autistic and neurotypical children. Twenty-three autistic children and 23 neurotypical children aged 6-13 years with no group differences in chronological age and verbal and nonverbal mental ages completed a musical beat perception task where they identified whether beeps superimposed on musical excerpts were on or off the musical beat. Overall task performance was above the theoretical chance threshold of 50% but not the statistical chance threshold of 70% across groups. On-beat (versus off-beat) accuracy was higher for the autistic group but not the neurotypical group. The autistic group was just as accurate at detecting beat alignments (on-beat) but less precise at detecting beat misalignments (off-beat) compared to the neurotypical group. Perceptual sensitivity to beat alignments provides support for spared music processing among autistic children and informs on the accessibility of using musical beats and rhythm for cultivating related skills and behaviours (e.g., language and motor abilities).

Individual differences in rhythm perception modulate music-related motor learning: a neurobehavioral training study with children

Rhythm and motor function are intrinsically linked to each other and to music, but the rhythm-motor interplay during music training, and the corresponding brain mechanisms, are underexplored. In a longitudinal training study with children, we examined the role of rhythm predisposition in the fine motor improvements arising from music training, and which brain regions would be implicated. Fifty-seven 8-year-olds were assigned to either a 6-month music training (n = 21), sports training (n = 18), or a control group (n = 18). They performed rhythm and motor tasks, and structural brain scans before and after training were collected. Better ability to perceive rhythm before training was related to less gray matter volume in regions of the cerebellum, fusiform gyrus, supramarginal gyrus, ventral diencephalon, amygdala, and inferior/middle temporal gyri. Music training improved motor performance, and greater improvements correlated with better pre-training rhythm discrimination. Music training also induced a loss of gray matter volume in the left cerebellum and fusiform gyrus, and volume loss correlated with higher motor gains. No such effects were found in the sports and control groups. In summary, children with finer-tuned rhythm perception abilities were prone to finer motor improvements through music training, and this rhythm-motor link was to some extent subserved by the left cerebellum and fusiform gyrus. These findings have implications for models on music-related plasticity and rhythm cognition, and for programs targeting motor function.

Sensorimotor synchronization with visual, auditory, and tactile modalities

While it is well known that humans are highly responsive to rhythm, the factors that influence our ability to synchronize remain unclear. In the current study, we examined how stimulus modality and rhythmic deviation, along with the synchronizer's level of musicality, impacted sensorimotor synchronization (SMS). Utilizing a finger-tapping task and three sensory modalities (visual, auditory, and tactile), we manipulated rhythmic deviation by varying the temporal position, intensity, and availability of cues across four deviation levels. Additionally, to determine our participants' musical familiarity and aptitude, we administered the Goldsmiths Musical Sophistication Index (Gold-MSI) questionnaire. We found that SMS to external rhythmic stimuli was significantly more precise for auditory and tactile than for visual sequences. Further, we found SMS consistency significantly decreased in all modalities with increased rhythmic deviation, suggesting rhythmic deviation directly relates to SMS difficulty. Moreover, a significant correlation was found between Gold-MSI scores and SMS consistency in the most rhythmically deviant level, such that the higher one's musical general sophistication score, the greater one's SMS ability. This held for all three modalities. Combined, these findings suggest that rhythmic synchronization performance is affected not only by the modality and rhythmic deviation of the stimuli but also by the musical general sophistication of the synchronizer.

Probabilistic modelling of microtiming perception

Music performances are rich in systematic temporal irregularities called "microtiming", too fine-grained to be notated in a musical score but important for musical expression and communication. Several studies have examined listeners' preference for rhythms varying in microtiming, but few have addressed precisely how microtiming is perceived, especially in terms of cognitive mechanisms, making the empirical evidence difficult to interpret. Here we provide evidence that microtiming perception can be simulated as a process of probabilistic prediction. Participants performed an XAB discrimination test, in which an archetypal popular drum rhythm was presented with different microtiming. The results indicate that listeners could implicitly discriminate the mean and variance of stimulus microtiming. Furthermore, their responses were effectively simulated by a Bayesian model of entrainment, using a distance function derived from its dynamic posterior estimate over phase. Wide individual differences in participant sensitivity to microtiming were predicted by a model parameter likened to noisy timekeeping processes in the brain. Overall, this suggests that the cognitive mechanisms underlying perception of microtiming reflect a continuous inferential process, potentially driving qualitative judgements of rhythmic feel.

Task-irrelevant auditory metre shapes visuomotor sequential learning

The ability to learn and reproduce sequences is fundamental to every-day life, and deficits in sequential learning are associated with developmental disorders such as specific language impairment. Individual differences in sequential learning are usually investigated using the serial reaction time task (SRTT), wherein a participant responds to a series of regularly timed, seemingly random visual cues that in fact follow a repeating deterministic structure. Although manipulating inter-cue interval timing has been shown to adversely affect sequential learning, the role of metre (the patterning of salience across time) remains unexplored within the regularly timed, visual SRTT. The current experiment consists of an SRTT adapted to include task-irrelevant auditory rhythms conferring a sense of metre. We predicted that (1) participants' (n = 41) reaction times would reflect the auditory metric structure; (2) that disrupting the correspondence between the learned visual sequence and auditory metre would impede performance; and (3) that individual differences in sensitivity to rhythm would predict the magnitude of these effects. Altering the relationship via a phase shift between the trained visual sequence and auditory metre slowed reaction times. Sensitivity to rhythm was predictive of reaction times over all. In an exploratory analysis, we, moreover, found that approximately half of participants made systematically different responses to visual cues on the basis of the cues' position within the auditory metre. We demonstrate the influence of auditory temporal structures on visuomotor sequential learning in a widely used task where metre and timing are rarely considered. The current results indicate sensitivity to metre as a possible latent factor underpinning individual differences in SRTT performance.

Temporal learning in the suprasecond range: insights from cognitive style

The acquisition of information on the timing of events or actions (temporal learning) occurs in both the subsecond and suprasecond range. However, although relevant differences between participants have been reported in temporal learning, the role of dimensions of individual variability in affecting performance in such tasks is still unclear. Here we investigated this issue, assessing the effect of field-dependent/independent cognitive style on temporal learning in the suprasecond range. Since different mechanisms mediate timing when a temporal representation is self-generated, and when it depends on an external referent, temporal learning was assessed in two conditions. Participants observed a stimulus across six repetitions and reproduced it. Unbeknownst to them, in an internally-based learning (IBL) condition, the stimulus duration was fixed within a trial, although the number of events defining it varied; in an externally-cued learning (ECL) condition, the stimulus was defined by the same number of events within each trial, although its duration varied. The effect of the reproduction modality was also assessed (motor vs. perceptual). Error scores were higher in IBL compared to ECL; the reverse was true for variability. Field-independent individuals performed better than field-dependent ones only in IBL, as further confirmed by correlation analyses. Findings provide evidence that differences in dimensions of variability in high-level cognitive functioning, such as field dependence/independence, significantly affect temporal learning in the suprasecond range, and that this effect depends on the type of temporal representation fostered by the specific task demands.

The Tapping-PROMS: A test for the assessment of sensorimotor rhythmic abilities

Sensorimotor synchronization is a longstanding paradigm in the analysis of isochronous beat tapping. Assessing the finger tapping of complex rhythmic patterns is far less explored and considerably more complex to analyze. Hence, whereas several instruments to assess tempo or beat tapping ability exist, there is at present a shortage of paradigms and tools for the assessment of the ability to tap to complex rhythmic patterns. To redress this limitation, we developed a standardized rhythm tapping test comprising test items of different complexity. The items were taken from the rhythm and tempo subtests of the Profile of Music Perception Skills (PROMS), and administered as tapping items to 40 participants (20 women). Overall, results showed satisfactory psychometric properties for internal consistency and test-retest reliability. Convergent, discriminant, and criterion validity correlations fell in line with expectations. Specifically, performance in rhythm tapping was correlated more strongly with performance in rhythm perception than in tempo perception, whereas performance in tempo tapping was more strongly correlated with performance in tempo than rhythm perception. Both tapping tasks were only marginally correlated with non-temporal perception tasks. In combination, the tapping tasks explained variance in external indicators of musical proficiency above and beyond the perceptual PROMS tasks. This tool allows for the assessment of complex rhythmic tapping skills in about 15 min, thus providing a useful addition to existing music aptitude batteries.

Auditory affective processing, musicality, and the development of misophonic reactions

Misophonia can be characterized both as a condition and as a negative affective experience. Misophonia is described as feeling irritation or disgust in response to hearing certain sounds, such as eating, drinking, gulping, and breathing. Although the earliest misophonic experiences are often described as occurring during childhood, relatively little is known about the developmental pathways that lead to individual variation in these experiences. This literature review discusses evidence of misophonic reactions during childhood and explores the possibility that early heightened sensitivities to both positive and negative sounds, such as to music, might indicate a vulnerability for misophonia and misophonic reactions. We will review when misophonia may develop, how it is distinguished from other auditory conditions (e.g., hyperacusis, phonophobia, or tinnitus), and how it relates to developmental disorders (e.g., autism spectrum disorder or Williams syndrome). Finally, we explore the possibility that children with heightened musicality could be more likely to experience misophonic reactions and develop misophonia.

Endogenous rhythms influence musicians' and non-musicians' interpersonal synchrony

Individuals display considerable rate differences in the spontaneous production of rhythmic behaviors (such as speech, gait, dance). Temporal precision in rhythmic behavior tends to be highest at individuals’ spontaneous production rates; musically trained partners with similar spontaneous rates show increased synchrony in joint tasks, consistent with predictions based on intrinsic frequencies of coupled oscillators. We address whether partner-specific influences of intrinsic frequencies are evidenced in musically trained and untrained individuals who tapped a familiar melody at a spontaneous (uncued) rate individually. Each individual then synchronized with a partner from the same musicianship group at an initially cued rate that matched the partners’ spontaneous rates. Musically trained partners showed greater synchrony in joint tapping than musically untrained partners. Asynchrony increased in both groups as the partners’ difference in individual spontaneous rates increased, with greater impact for musically untrained pairs. Recurrence quantification analysis confirmed that musically untrained individuals demonstrated greater determinism (less flexibility) in their tapping than musically trained individuals. Furthermore, individuals with greater determinism in solo performances demonstrated reduced synchrony in joint performances. These findings suggest that musicians’ increased temporal flexibility is associated with decreased endogenous constraints on production rate and greater interpersonal synchrony in musical tasks.

Music Literacy and Soundscape Perception: A Study Based on the Soundwalk Method of Soundscapes

To explore a method of promoting college aesthetic education through campus environments, the Aesthetic Education Center of the Beijing Institute of Technology Zhuhai (BITZH-AEC) used the soundwalk method of soundscapes to carry out an experiment on students' soundscape perceptions on campus. Half of the students who participated in the experiment (n = 42) had musical instrument learning experience and musical literacy. The research work used conventional statistical analysis methods and "Soundscapy", newly developed by the British soundscape research team, to process the experimental data. It was found that the soundscape perception evaluation of students with musical literacy was different from that of ordinary students. This included a difference in the overall evaluation of the three experimental areas and a difference in the degree of dispersion of the soundscape evaluation of all six experimental areas. The study also found that there was no correlation between the acoustic noise level and the students' evaluations of soundscape perception. BITZH-AEC proposes that aesthetic educators should pay attention to the idea of inspiring students to stimulate cultural imagination through soundscape perception.

Tapping Performance of Professional and Amateur Darbuka Players

Motor skills of professional musicians can be regarded as a model to investigate human skill acquisition after prolonged practice. Although rhythmic tapping skills of musicians such as drummers and pianists were investigated previously, the tapping performance of hand percussionists is still largely unknown. In this study, we investigated the tapping performance of professional and amateur darbuka players. Three tapping tasks were performed: single-, double-, and triple-finger tapping tasks. The participants were asked to tap as fast as possible for 12 s in the single-finger tapping task while they tapped as fast and alternate/even as possible in the double- and triple-finger tapping tasks. The tapping speed and variability of inter-tap interval (ITI) and tapping amplitude were assessed for each task. In the single-finger and triple-finger tapping tasks, there was no significant difference in the tapping speed between the professional and amateur darbuka players. In the double-finger tapping task, the tapping speed was significantly faster in the professional players than the amateur players. Interestingly, the professional players showed faster tapping speed in both familiar and unfamiliar patterns of finger coordination. The tapping speed of the double-finger tapping task was significantly correlated with the duration and the age of commencement of darbuka training. The professional players also showed less variability of ITI and tapping amplitude compared to the amateur players. These results suggest that prolonged practice of the hand percussion increases the performance stability and coordination speed of both familiar and unfamiliar patterns.

Aesthetics of musical timing: Culture and expertise affect preferences for isochrony but not synchrony

Expressive communication in the arts often involves deviations from stylistic norms, which can increase the aesthetic evaluation of an artwork or performance. The detection and appreciation of such expressive deviations may be amplified by cultural familiarity and expertise of the observer. One form of expressive communication in music is playing "out of time," including asynchrony (deviations from synchrony between different instruments) and non-isochrony (deviations from equal spacing between subsequent note onsets or metric units). As previous research has provided somewhat conflicting perspectives on the degree to which deviations from synchrony and isochrony are aesthetically relevant, we aimed to shed new light on this topic by accounting for the effects of listeners' cultural familiarity and expertise. We manipulated (a)synchrony and (non-)isochrony separately in excerpts from three groove-based musical styles (jazz, candombe, and jembe), using timings from real performances. We recruited musician and non-musician participants (N = 176) from three countries (UK, Uruguay, and Mali), selected to vary in their prior experience of hearing and performing these three styles. Participants completed both an aesthetic preference rating task and a perceptual discrimination task for the stimuli. Our results indicate an overall preference toward synchrony in these styles, but culturally contingent, expertise-dependent preferences for deviations from isochrony. This suggests that temporal processing relies on mechanisms that vary in their dependence on low-level and high-level perception, and emphasizes the role of cultural familiarity and expertise in shaping aesthetic preferences.

Sounds familiar(?): Expertise with specific musical genres modulates timing perception and micro-level synchronization to auditory stimuli

Musical expertise improves the precision of timing perception and performance - but is this expertise generic, or is it tied to the specific style(s) and genre(s) of one's musical training? We asked expert musicians from three musical genres (folk, jazz, and EDM/hip-hop) to align click tracks and tap in synchrony with genre-specific and genre-neutral sound stimuli to determine the perceptual center ("P-center") and variability ("beat bin") for each group of experts. We had three stimulus categories - Organic, Electronic, and Neutral sounds - each of which had a 2 × 2 design of the acoustic factors Attack (fast/slow) and Duration (short/long). We found significant effects of Genre expertise, and a significant interaction for both P-center and P-center variability: folk and jazz musicians synchronize to sounds typical of folk and jazz in a different manner than the EDM/hip-hop producers. The results show that expertise in a specific musical genre affects our low-level perceptions of sounds as well as their affordance(s) for joint action/synchronization. The study provides new insights into the effects of active long-term musical enculturation and skill acquisition on basic sensorimotor synchronization and timing perception, shedding light on the important question of how nature and nurture intersect in the development of our perceptual systems.

Rhythmic abilities in humans and non-human animals: a review and recommendations from a methodological perspective

Rhythmic behaviour is ubiquitous in both human and non-human animals, but it is unclear whether the cognitive mechanisms underlying the specific rhythmic behaviours observed in different species are related. Laboratory experiments combined with highly controlled stimuli and tasks can be very effective in probing the cognitive architecture underlying rhythmic abilities. Rhythmic abilities have been examined in the laboratory with explicit and implicit perception tasks, and with production tasks, such as sensorimotor synchronization, with stimuli ranging from isochronous sequences of artificial sounds to human music. Here, we provide an overview of experimental findings on rhythmic abilities in human and non-human animals, while critically considering the wide variety of paradigms used. We identify several gaps in what is known about rhythmic abilities. Many bird species have been tested on rhythm perception, but research on rhythm production abilities in the same birds is lacking. By contrast, research in mammals has primarily focused on rhythm production rather than perception. Many experiments also do not differentiate between possible components of rhythmic abilities, such as processing of single temporal intervals, rhythmic patterns, a regular beat or hierarchical metrical structures. For future research, we suggest a careful choice of paradigm to aid cross-species comparisons, and a critical consideration of the multifaceted abilities that underlie rhythmic behaviour. This article is part of the theme issue 'Synchrony and rhythm interaction: from the brain to behavioural ecology'.

Extreme precision in rhythmic interaction is enabled by role-optimized sensorimotor coupling: analysis and modelling of West African drum ensemble music

Human social interactions often involve carefully synchronized behaviours. Musical performance in particular features precise timing and depends on the differentiation and coordination of musical/social roles. Here, we study the influence of musical/social roles, individual musicians and different ensembles on rhythmic synchronization in Malian drum ensemble music, which features synchronization accuracy near the limits of human performance. We analysed 72 recordings of the same piece performed by four trios, in which two drummers in each trio systematically switched roles (lead versus accompaniment). Musical role, rather than individual or group differences, is the main factor influencing synchronization accuracy. Using linear causal modelling, we found a consistent pattern of bi-directional couplings between players, in which the direction and strength of rhythmic adaptation is asymmetrically distributed across musical roles. This differs from notions of musical leadership, which assume that ensemble synchronization relies predominantly on a single dominant personality and/or musical role. We then ran simulations that varied the direction and strength of sensorimotor coupling and found that the coupling pattern used by the Malian musicians affords nearly optimal synchronization. More broadly, our study showcases the importance of ecologically valid and culturally diverse studies of human behaviour. This article is part of the theme issue 'Synchrony and rhythm interaction: from the brain to behavioural ecology'.

Transient brain networks underlying interpersonal strategies during synchronized action

Interpersonal coordination is a core part of human interaction, and its underlying mechanisms have been extensively studied using social paradigms such as joint finger-tapping. Here, individual and dyadic differences have been found to yield a range of dyadic synchronization strategies, such as mutual adaptation, leading–leading, and leading–following behaviour, but the brain mechanisms that underlie these strategies remain poorly understood. To identify individual brain mechanisms underlying emergence of these minimal social interaction strategies, we contrasted EEG-recorded brain activity in two groups of musicians exhibiting the mutual adaptation and leading–leading strategies. We found that the individuals coordinating via mutual adaptation exhibited a more frequent occurrence of phase-locked activity within a transient action–perception-related brain network in the alpha range, as compared to the leading–leading group. Furthermore, we identified parietal and temporal brain regions that changed significantly in the directionality of their within-network information flow. Our results suggest that the stronger weight on extrinsic coupling observed in computational models of mutual adaptation as compared to leading–leading might be facilitated by a higher degree of action–perception network coupling in the brain.

The Musical Ear Test: Norms and correlates from a large sample of Canadian undergraduates

We sought to establish norms and correlates for the Musical Ear Test (MET), an objective test of musical ability. A large sample of undergraduates at a Canadian university (N > 500) took the 20-min test, which provided a Total score as well as separate scores for its Melody and Rhythm subtests. On each trial, listeners judged whether standard and comparison auditory sequences were the same or different. Norms were derived as percentiles, Z-scores, and T-scores. The distribution of scores was approximately normal without floor or ceiling effects. There were no gender differences on either subtest or the total score. As expected, scores on both subtests were correlated with performance on a test of immediate recall for nonmusical auditory stimuli (Digit Span Forward). Moreover, as duration of music training increased, so did performance on both subtests, but starting lessons at a younger age was not predictive of better musical abilities. Listeners who spoke a tone language exhibited enhanced performance on the Melody subtest but not on the Rhythm subtest. The MET appears to have adequate psychometric characteristics that make it suitable for researchers who seek to measure musical abilities objectively.

Task switching in old participants: A potential interplay between strategy and cognitive ability

Task-switching cost is highly reliable in old participants. However, in a Stroop-switching paradigm that compared old musicians with old non-musicians (Experiment 1A), task-switching costs were not consistent. For non-musicians, the task-switching costs were significant in the congruent and neutral trials, but not in the incongruent trials. For musicians, the task-switching costs disappeared completely. We suspected that besides following task rules, old participants might also apply a stimulus-based strategy called the target-first strategy. In Experiment 1B and 2, participants in Experiment 1A were invited again to perform two more Stroop-switching paradigms. To encourage the participants to use task rules, in Experiment 1B we removed the neutral trials but found the same results as in Experiment 1A. In Experiment 2, when inserting a cue-target interval in the Stroop-switching paradigm, both musicians and non-musicians produced reliable task-switching costs in all trial conditions. Note that younger participants had reliable task-switching costs in Experiment 1B and 2. We suggest that older participants preferred the target-first strategy to the task rules-based strategy because the former was easy to implant although it was less flexible. Besides task-switching costs, we found that old musicians had less interference effect than old non-musicians in Experiment 1B. In all three experiments, old musicians had shorter RTs than old non-musicians, which might be due to differences in strategies apart from cognitive abilities. We propose that without considering the strategy preference, some previous studies might misestimate the difference between old and young participants in terms of task-switching performance and interference control.

Task-set control, chunking, and hierarchical timing in rhythm production

We investigated task-set control processes and chunking in 16 novices and 16 amateur musicians, who produced unimanual rhythms in three experimental conditions: low-level timing tasks required isochronous tapping at constant target durations; sequencing tasks consisted of individual rhythmic patterns comprising multiple target durations; the task-set control condition required alternations between two rhythmic patterns. According to our hierarchical timing control model conditions differed in their task-set control demands necessary to provide rhythm programs for the sequencing of individual intervals. Transitions at predicted chunk boundaries were marked by increased frequencies of sequence errors, relative lengthening of intervals preceding the switch to a new rhythm chunk, and increased variabilities in intervals immediately following a switch. Amateur musicians showed superior timing (less variability) in complex rhythm tasks. Moreover, they made fewer sequence errors than novices at set-switch points with their error patterns suggesting that they relied on larger chunks compared with novices. Our findings elucidate the time course of task reconfiguration processes in rhythm production and the role of chunking in the context of musical skill.

Musical interaction is influenced by underlying predictive models and musical expertise

Musical interaction is a unique model for understanding humans’ ability to align goals, intentions, and actions, which also allows for the manipulation of participants’ internal predictive models of upcoming events. Here we used polyrhythms to construct two joint finger tapping tasks that even when rhythmically dissimilar resulted in equal inter-tap intervals (ITIs). Thus, behaviourally a dyad of two musicians tap isochronously at the same rate, yet with their own distinct rhythmical context model (RCM). We recruited 22 highly skilled musicians (in 11 dyads) and contrasted the effect of having a shared versus non-shared RCM on dyads’ synchronization behaviour. As expected, tapping synchronization was significantly worse at the start of trials with non-shared models compared to trials with a shared model. However, the musicians were able to quickly recover when holding dissimilar predictive models. We characterised the directionality in the tapping behaviour of the dyads and found patterns mostly of mutual adaptation. Yet, in a subset of dyads primarily consisting of drummers, we found significantly different synchronization patterns, suggesting that instrument expertise can significantly affect synchronization strategies. Overall, this demonstrates that holding different predictive models impacts synchronization in musicians performing joint finger tapping.

Cognitive Control Structures in the Imitation Learning of Spatial Sequences and Rhythms-An fMRI Study

Imitation learning involves the acquisition of novel motor patterns based on action observation (AO). We used event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging to study the imitation learning of spatial sequences and rhythms during AO, motor imagery (MI), and imitative execution in nonmusicians and musicians. While both tasks engaged the fronto-parietal mirror circuit, the spatial sequence task recruited posterior parietal and dorsal premotor regions more strongly. The rhythm task involved an additional network for auditory working memory. This partial dissociation supports the concept of task-specific mirror mechanisms. Two regions of cognitive control were identified: 1) dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) was found to be more strongly activated during MI of novel spatial sequences, which allowed us to extend the 2-level model of imitation learning by Buccino et al. (2004) to spatial sequences. 2) During imitative execution of both tasks, the posterior medial frontal cortex was robustly activated, along with the DLPFC, which suggests that both regions are involved in the cognitive control of imitation learning. The musicians' selective behavioral advantage for rhythm imitation was reflected cortically in enhanced sensory-motor processing during AO and by the absence of practice-related activation differences in DLPFC during rhythm execution.

Orff-Based Music Training Enhances Children's Manual Dexterity and Bimanual Coordination

How music training and expertise influence non-musical abilities is a widely researched topic. Most studies focus on the differences between adult professional musicians and non-musicians, or examine the effects of intensive instrumental training in childhood. However, the impact of music programs developed in regular school contexts for children from low-income communities is poorly explored. We conducted a longitudinal training study in such communities to examine if collective (Orff-based) music training enhances fine motor abilities, when compared to a homologous training program in sports (basketball), and to no specific training. The training programs in music and sports had the same duration, 24 weeks, and were homologous in structure. A pre-test, training, post-test and follow-up design was adopted. Children attending the 3rd grade (n = 74, 40 girls; mean age 8.31 years) were pseudorandomly divided into three groups, music, sports and control that were matched on demographic and intellectual characteristics. Fine motor abilities were assessed with the Purdue pegboard test (eye-hand coordination and motor speed, both subsumed under manual dexterity, and bimanual coordination) and with the Grooved pegboard (manipulative dexterity) test. All groups improved in manipulative dexterity that was not affected by type of training. On bimanual coordination and manual dexterity, however, a robust and stable advantage of music training emerged. At the end of training (post-test), children from the music group significantly outperformed children from the sports and control groups, an advantage that persisted at follow-up 4 months after training at the start of the following school year. Also, at follow-up none of the children from the music group were performing below the 20th percentile in the Purdue pegboard subtests and more than half were performing at the high end level (>80th percentile). Children from the sports group also improved significantly from pre- to post-test but their performance was not significantly different from that of the control group. These results show that an affordable, collective-based music practice impacts positively on fine-motor abilities, a finding that is relevant for a better understanding of the impact of music in childhood development, and that may have implications for education at the primary grade.

Investigating the Impact of a Musical Intervention on Preschool Children's Executive Function

The impact of music interventions on the cognitive skills of young children has become the focus of a growing number of research studies in recent years. This study investigated the effect of weekly musicianship training on the executive function abilities of 3-to-4-year-old children at a London, United Kingdom preschool, using a two-phase experimental design. In Phase 1, 14 children (Group A) took part in eight weekly musicianship classes, provided by a specialist music teacher, while 25 children (Groups B and C combined) engaged in nursery free play. Results of this Phase showed Group A to have improved on two measures relating to planning and inhibition skills. During Phase 2, Group A continued with music classes, while Group B began music classes for the first time and Group C took part in an art intervention. Repeated measures ANOVA found no significant difference in performance improvement between the three participant groups during phase 2; however, the performance difference between groups was nearing significance for the peg tapping task (p = 0.06). The findings from this study contribute to current debates about the potential cognitive benefit of musical interventions, including important issues regarding intervention duration, experimental design, target age groups, executive function testing, and task novelty.

Organizational principles of multidimensional predictions in human auditory attention

Anticipating the future rests upon our ability to exploit contextual cues and to formulate valid internal models or predictions. It is currently unknown how multiple predictions combine to bias perceptual information processing, and in particular whether this is determined by physiological constraints, behavioral relevance (task demands), or past knowledge (perceptual expertise). In a series of behavioral auditory experiments involving musical experts and non-musicians, we investigated the respective and combined contribution of temporal and spectral predictions in multiple detection tasks. We show that temporal and spectral predictions alone systematically increase perceptual sensitivity, independently of task demands or expertise. When combined, however, spectral predictions benefit more to non-musicians and dominate over temporal ones, and the extent of the spectrotemporal synergistic interaction depends on task demands. This suggests that the hierarchy of dominance primarily reflects the tonotopic organization of the auditory system and that expertise or attention only have a secondary modulatory influence.

Rhythm and Melody Tasks for School-Aged Children With and Without Musical Training: Age-Equivalent Scores and Reliability

Measuring musical abilities in childhood can be challenging. When music training and maturation occur simultaneously, it is difficult to separate the effects of specific experience from age-based changes in cognitive and motor abilities. The goal of this study was to develop age-equivalent scores for two measures of musical ability that could be reliably used with school-aged children (7–13) with and without musical training. The children's Rhythm Synchronization Task (c-RST) and the children's Melody Discrimination Task (c-MDT) were adapted from adult tasks developed and used in our laboratories. The c-RST is a motor task in which children listen and then try to synchronize their taps with the notes of a woodblock rhythm while it plays twice in a row. The c-MDT is a perceptual task in which the child listens to two melodies and decides if the second was the same or different. We administered these tasks to 213 children in music camps (musicians, n = 130) and science camps (non-musicians, n = 83). We also measured children's paced tapping, non-paced tapping, and phonemic discrimination as baseline motor and auditory abilities We estimated internal-consistency reliability for both tasks, and compared children's performance to results from studies with adults. As expected, musically trained children outperformed those without music lessons, scores decreased as difficulty increased, and older children performed the best. Using non-musicians as a reference group, we generated a set of age-based z-scores, and used them to predict task performance with additional years of training. Years of lessons significantly predicted performance on both tasks, over and above the effect of age. We also assessed the relation between musician's scores on music tasks, baseline tasks, auditory working memory, and non-verbal reasoning. Unexpectedly, musician children outperformed non-musicians in two of three baseline tasks. The c-RST and c-MDT fill an important need for researchers interested in evaluating the impact of musical training in longitudinal studies, those interested in comparing the efficacy of different training methods, and for those assessing the impact of training on non-musical cognitive abilities such as language processing.

Musical Scales in Tone Sequences Improve Temporal Accuracy

Predicting the time of stimulus onset is a key component in perception. Previous investigations of perceived timing have focused on the effect of stimulus properties such as rhythm and temporal irregularity, but the influence of non-temporal properties and their role in predicting stimulus timing has not been exhaustively considered. The present study aims to understand how a non-temporal pattern in a sequence of regularly timed stimuli could improve or bias the detection of temporal deviations. We presented interspersed sequences of 3, 4, 5, and 6 auditory tones where only the timing of the last stimulus could slightly deviate from isochrony. Participants reported whether the last tone was ‘earlier’ or ‘later’ relative to the expected regular timing. In two conditions, the tones composing the sequence were either organized into musical scales or they were random tones. In one experiment, all sequences ended with the same tone; in the other experiment, each sequence ended with a different tone. Results indicate higher discriminability of anisochrony with musical scales and with longer sequences, irrespective of the knowledge of the final tone. Such an outcome suggests that the predictability of non-temporal properties, as enabled by the musical scale pattern, can be a factor in determining the sensitivity of time judgments.

Long-Term Musical Training Alters Tactile Temporal-Order Judgment

Long-term musical training is an enriched multisensory training environment that can alter uni- and multisensory substrates and abilities. Amongst these altered abilities are faster reaction times for simple and complex sensory tasks. The crossed arm temporal-order judgement (TOJ) task is a complex tactile task in which TOJ error rate increases when arms are crossed. Reaction times (RTs) for this task are typically proportionate to the difficulty of the stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) and increase more when the arms are crossed than when uncrossed. The objective of this study was to study the impact of musical training on RTs and accuracy for the crossed arm TOJ task. Seventeen musicians and 20 controls were tested. Musicians had significantly faster RTs for all crossed arm conditions and half of the uncrossed conditions. However, musicians had significantly more TOJ errors for the crossed posture. We speculate that faster musician TOJ RTs leave little time to consolidate conflicting internal and external task-related information when crossing the arms, leading to increased incorrect responses. These results provide novel insights on the potential mechanisms underlying the increased TOJ error rates when arms are crossed. Moreover, they add to the growing literature of altered sensory ability in musicians and propose an unexpected consequence of faster reaction times.

Speech-in-noise perception is linked to rhythm production skills in adult percussionists and non-musicians

Speech rhythms guide perception, especially in noise. We recently revealed that percussionists outperform non-musicians in speech-in-noise perception, with better speech-in-noise perception associated with better rhythm discrimination across a range of rhythmic expertise. Here, we consider rhythm production skills, specifically drumming to a beat (metronome or music) and to sequences (metrical or jittered patterns), as well as speech-in-noise perception in adult percussionists and non-musicians. Given the absence of a regular beat in speech, we hypothesise that processing of sequences is more important for speech-in-noise perception than the ability to entrain to a regular beat. Consistent with our hypotheses, we find that the sequence-based drumming measures predict speech-in-noise perception, above and beyond hearing thresholds and IQ, whereas the beat-based measures do not. Outcomes suggest temporal patterns may help disambiguate speech under degraded listening conditions, extending theoretical considerations about speech rhythm to the everyday challenge of listening in noise.

Feeling the Beat: Bouncing Synchronization to Vibrotactile Music in Hearing and Early Deaf People

The ability to dance relies on the ability to synchronize movements to a perceived musical beat. Typically, beat synchronization is studied with auditory stimuli. However, in many typical social dancing situations, music can also be perceived as vibrations when objects that generate sounds also generate vibrations. This vibrotactile musical perception is of particular relevance for deaf people, who rely on non-auditory sensory information for dancing. In the present study, we investigated beat synchronization to vibrotactile electronic dance music in hearing and deaf people. We tested seven deaf and 14 hearing individuals on their ability to bounce in time with the tempo of vibrotactile stimuli (no sound) delivered through a vibrating platform. The corresponding auditory stimuli (no vibrations) were used in an additional condition in the hearing group. We collected movement data using a camera-based motion capture system and subjected it to a phase-locking analysis to assess synchronization quality. The vast majority of participants were able to precisely time their bounces to the vibrations, with no difference in performance between the two groups. In addition, we found higher performance for the auditory condition compared to the vibrotactile condition in the hearing group. Our results thus show that accurate tactile-motor synchronization in a dance-like context occurs regardless of auditory experience, though auditory-motor synchronization is of superior quality.

Expertise-dependent motor somatotopy of music perception

Precise mapping between sound and motion underlies successful communication and information transmission in speech and musical performance. Formation of the map typically undergoes plastic changes in the neuronal network between auditory and motor regions through training. However, to what extent the map is somatotopically-tuned so that auditory information can specifically modulate the corticospinal system responsible for the relevant motor action has not been elucidated. Here we addressed this issue by assessing the excitability of corticospinal system including the primary motor cortex (M1) innervating the hand intrinsic muscles by means of transcranial magnetic stimulation while trained pianists and musically-untrained individuals (non-musicians) were listening to either piano tones or noise. M1 excitability was evaluated at two anatomically-independent muscles of the hand. The results demonstrated elevation of M1 excitability at not all but one specific muscle while listening to piano tones in the pianists, but no excitability change in both of the muscles in the non-musicians. However, listening to noise did not elicit any changes of M1 excitability at both muscles in both the pianists and the non-musicians. These findings indicate that auditory information representing the trained motor action tunes M1 excitability in a non-uniform, somatotopically-specific manner, which is likely associated with multimodal experiences in musical training.

Neural Entrainment to Polyrhythms: A Comparison of Musicians and Non-musicians

Music can be thought of as a dynamic path over time. In most cases, the rhythmic structure of this path, such as specific sequences of strong and weak beats or recurring patterns, allows us to predict what and particularly when sounds are going to happen. Without this ability we would not be able to entrain body movements to music, like we do when we dance. By combining EEG and behavioral measures, the current study provides evidence illustrating the importance of ongoing neural oscillations at beat-related frequencies-i.e., neural entrainment-for tracking and predicting musical rhythms. Participants (13 musicians and 13 non-musicians) listened to drum rhythms that switched from a quadruple rhythm to a 3-over-4 polyrhythm. After a silent period of ~2-3 s, participants had to decide whether a target stimulus was presented on time with the triple beat of the polyrhythm, too early, or too late. Results showed that neural oscillations reflected the rhythmic structure of both the simple quadruple rhythm and the more complex polyrhythm with no differences between musicians and non-musicians. During silent periods, the observation of time-frequency plots and more commonly used frequency spectra analyses suggest that beat-related neural oscillations were more pronounced in musicians compared to non-musicians. Neural oscillations during silent periods are not driven by an external input and therefore are thought to reflect top-down controlled endogenous neural entrainment. The functional relevance of endogenous neural entrainment was demonstrated by a positive correlation between the amplitude of task-relevant neural oscillations during silent periods and the number of correctly identified target stimuli. In sum, our findings add to the evidence supporting the neural resonance theory of pulse and meter. Furthermore, they indicate that beat-related top-down controlled neural oscillations can exist without external stimulation and suggest that those endogenous oscillations are strengthened by musical expertise. Finally, this study shows that the analysis of neural oscillations can be a useful tool to assess how we perceive and process complex auditory stimuli such as polyrhythms.

The Beat to Read: A Cross-Lingual Link between Rhythmic Regularity Perception and Reading Skill

This work assesses one specific aspect of the relationship between auditory rhythm cognition and language skill: regularity perception. In a group of 26 adult participants, native speakers of 11 different native languages, we demonstrate a strong and significant correlation between the ability to detect a "roughly" regular beat and rapid automatized naming (RAN) as a measure of language skill (Spearman's rho, -0.47, p < 0.01). There was no such robust relationship for the "mirror image" task of irregularity detection, i.e., the ability to detect ongoing small deviations from a regular beat. The correlation between RAN and regularity detection remained significant after partialling out performance on the irregularity detection task (rho, -0.41, p, 0.022), non-verbal IQ (rho, -0.37, p < 0.05), or musical expertise (rho, -0.31, p < 0.05). Whilst being consistent with the "shared resources model" in terms of rhythm as a common basis of language and music, evolutionarily as well as in individual development, the results also document how two related rhythm processing abilities relate differently to language skill. Specifically, the results support a universal relationship between rhythmic regularity detection and reading skill that is robust to accounting for differences in fluid intelligence and musical expertise, and transcends language-specific differences in speech rhythm.