The role of musical training in emergent and event-based timing

Abstract

Introduction: Musical performance is thought to rely predominantly on event-based timing involving a clock-like neural process and an explicit internal representation of the time interval. Some aspects of musical performance may rely on emergent timing, which is established through the optimization of movement kinematics, and can be maintained without reference to any explicit representation of the time interval. We predicted that musical training would have its largest effect on event-based timing, supporting the dissociability of these timing processes and the dominance of event-based timing in musical performance.Materials and Methods: We compared 22 musicians and 17 non-musicians on the prototypical event-based timing task of finger tapping and on the typically emergently timed task of circle drawing. For each task, participants first responded in synchrony with a metronome (Paced) and then responded at the same rate without the metronome (Unpaced).Results: Analyses of the Unpaced phase revealed that non-musicians were more variable in their inter-response intervals for finger tapping compared to circle drawing. Musicians did not differ between the two tasks. Between groups, non-musicians were more variable than musicians for tapping but not for drawing. We were able to show that the differences were due to less timer variability in musicians on the tapping task. Correlational analyses of movement jerk and inter-response interval variability revealed a negative association for tapping and a positive association for drawing in non-musicians only.Discussion: These results suggest that musical training affects temporal variability in tapping but not drawing. Additionally, musicians and non-musicians may be employing different movement strategies to maintain accurate timing in the two tasks. These findings add to our understanding of how musical training affects timing and support the dissociability of event-based and emergent timing modes.

Regional cerebellar volumes are related to early musical training and finger tapping performance

“…Timing ability is measured by analyzing the time series of inter-response intervals (IRIs) of the unpaced phase, such that an IRI is defined by the time interval between adjacent taps. The tapping paradigm employed in the present study was also used in a recent study from our group that showed that musicians are substantially less variable in the timing of their unpaced responses compared to non-musicians (Baer et al, 2013). This is consistent with other studies that have demonstrated that musicians are less variable (Franĕk et al, 1991;Repp, 2010;Repp and Doggett, 2007), and show less drift away from the prescribed tapping rate compared to non-musicians (Collier and Ogden, 2004).…”

“…Similar factors may be responsible for the volume decreases observed here. In support of this explanation, we found in a previous study that non-musicians exhibited a negative association between movement jerk and timer variability on a tapping task, while musicians' jerk and timing were decoupled, indicating that musicians were able to achieve superior timing with less sensory feedback (Baer et al, 2013), as jerk is a source of proprioceptive information (Balasubramaniam et al, 2004).…”

“…The experimental set-up for the finger-tapping task was identical to that used in a previous study (Baer et al, 2013), including the use of motion capture equipment to record finger movement. Participants used their right index finger to tap on a tabletop in synchrony with an auditory metronome (1 kHz 20 ms tone) for 35 cycles (paced phase).…”

“…As described in detail elsewhere (Baer et al, 2013), our algorithm first identified local maxima on the acceleration curve of finger motion and then adjusted the corresponding points on the position curve so that they coincided with nearby local minima. This was a more reliable method of detecting tap onset points than examining the position curve directly for local minima.…”

“…Event-based timing, a form of sub-second timing modeled as a central clock process operating independently of the motor response that is being timed (Wing and Kristofferson, 1973) likely underlies the time-based components of musical performance (Baer et al, 2013). It is typically evaluated using the finger-tapping task (Repp and Su, 2013;Repp, 2005), in which participants first tap in synchrony with an auditory metronome (paced phase); when the metronome stops, they are asked to continue tapping at the same rate (unpaced phase).…”