The development of rhythmic attending in auditory sequences: attunement, referent period, focal attending

Auditory attention to frequency and time: an analogy to visual local–global stimuli

“…The first has been concerned with rhythmic sequences of auditory events and how the temporal relationships between events affects the perception of subsequent events in the sequence (i.e. Dynamic Attending Theory; Drake et al, 2000;Jones & Boltz, 1989). A second experimental technique employs a temporal analogue of the Posner (1980) spatial cueing task; participants can be effectively cued by a visual symbol to attend to a specific point in time-one of two temporal intervals following the cue (Coull, Frith, Büchel, & Nobre, 2000;Coull & Nobre, 1998;Griffin, Miniussi, & Nobre, 2002;Miniussi, Wilding, Coull, & Nobre, 1999; for review see Nobre, 2001).…”

Rhythmic context influences the auditory evoked potentials of musicians and nonmusicians

“…In line, Schulze (1989) suggests that categorical perception is a function of learning: if sufficient training is provided, perceivers may learn to identify and discriminate between rhythmic categories which without training might have been part of a single, more undifferentiated category. More specifically, Drake et al (2000) reported that musical training enhances the ability to extract a hierarchical structure from rhythmical sequences. We also found differences between musicians and nonmusicians such that with an increase in musical experience, there seems to be an increase in hierarchical levels in which rhythmical sequences can be perceived.…”

Tapping to Carter: Mensural Determinacy in Complex Rhythmic Sequences

“…For example, in a study that combined structural equation modeling and covariance analysis, Magill and Pressing (1997) were able to demonstrate that a cognitive clock model based on nonisochronous pulses provided a good fit for most of the polyrhythmic patterns performed by an expert master drummer from West Africa. More generally, musicians have been found to exhibit enhanced skills in rhythmic tasks, such as lower thresholds for detecting timing deviations (Rammsayer & Altenmüller, 2006;Jones et al, 1995), access to a larger number of pulse levels (Drake, Jones, & Baruch, 2000;Drake, Penel, & Bigand, 2000), and greater facility in finding and subdividing an implied beat (Jones & Yee, 1997;Palmer & Krumhansl, 1990). Furthermore, although they are more sensitive to timing deviations, musicians are also more resilient to timing irregularities in pulse attribution tasks (Madison & Merker, 2002).…”

“…In actual music, there can be several different possible periodicities to attune to, and meter itself is conceptualized as a nested hierarchy of at least two pulse levels related to each other by simple ratios such as 2:1, 3:1, or 4:1 (e.g., Keller & Burnham, 2005, p. 630;Yeston, 1976). Even if focal attention tasks are used, that is, tasks in which participants are asked to tap at the next higher and/or lower pulse levels (e.g., Drake, Jones, & Baruch, 2000;Drake, Penel, & Bigand, 2000), metric perception as such is only witnessed indirectly. [2] The use of neuroscientific methods has opened new possibilities for the observation of temporal processing, but much work is still needed to clarify how different timing mechanisms (such as "beat-based" and "interval-based" mechanisms; see Repp & Su, 2013, pp.…”