Discrimination of Modulated Beat Tempo by Professional Musicians

Kuhn, Terry

doi:10.2307/3344764

Cited by 53 publications

(24 citation statements)

References 7 publications

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“…Thus, the arithmetic task interfered with detection of tempo changes, as was fully expected. In addition, tempo decelerations were easier to detect than accelerations, F(1, 9) = 5.8, p < .04, as observed previously (Kuhn, 1974;Madsen, 1979;Repp, 2001b). The main effect of intention was nonsignificant, which indicates (somewhat surprisingly) that participants did not derive additional perceptual information from any increased asynchrony between their taps and the final sequence tones in the nonadaptive conditions.…”

Section: Perceptual Judgementssupporting

confidence: 68%

Adaptation to tempo changes in sensorimotor synchronization: Effects of intention, attention, and awareness

Repp

Keller

2004

The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology Section A

182

145

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Adaptation to tempo changes in sensorimotor synchronization is hypothesized to rest on two processes, one (phase correction) being largely automatic and the other (period correction) requiring conscious awareness and attention. In this study, participants tapped their finger in synchrony with auditory sequences containing a tempo change and continued tapping after sequence termination. Their intention to adapt or not to adapt to the tempo change was manipulated through instructions, their attentional resources were varied by introducing a concurrent secondary task (mental arithmetic), and their awareness of the tempo changes was assessed through perceptual judgements. As predicted, period correction was found to be strongly dependent on all three variables, whereas phase correction depended only on intention.

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Section: Perceptual Judgementssupporting

confidence: 68%

Adaptation to tempo changes in sensorimotor synchronization: Effects of intention, attention, and awareness

Repp

Keller

2004

The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology Section A

182

145

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…If we can assume that the experimental situation was somewhat stressful (many subjects seemed to be embarrassed or nervous), this could account for the asymmetric error distribution favoring faster reproductions. An additional explanation for this asymmetry comes from experimental findings that people are more likely to perform faster rather than slower (Kuhn, 1977) and are better able to detect tempo decreases rather than increases (Kuhn, 1974).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Memory for musical tempo: Additional evidence that auditory memory is absolute

Levitin

Cook

1996

Perception & Psychophysics

162

160

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We report evidence that long-term memory retains absolute (accurate) features of perceptual events. Specifically, we show that memory for music seems to preserve the absolute tempo of the musical performance. In Experiment 1, 46 subjects sang two different popular songs from memory, and their tempos were compared with recorded versions of the songs. Seventy-two percent of the productions on two consecutive trials came within 8%of the actual tempo, demonstrating accuracy near the perceptual threshold (JND) for tempo. In Experiment 2, a control experiment, we found that folk songs lacking a tempo standard generally have a large variability in tempo; this counters arguments that memory for the tempo of remembered songs is driven by articulatory constraints. The relevance of the present findings to theories of perceptual memory and memory for music is discussed.A fundamental problem facing memory theorists is how to account for two seemingly disparate properties of memory. On the one hand, a rich body of literature suggests that the role of memory is to preserve the gist of experiences; memory functions to formulate general rules and create abstract concepts on the basis of specific exemplars (Posner & Keele, 1970;Rosch, 1975). On the other hand, there is the extensive literature suggesting that memory accurately preserves absolute features of experiences (Brooks, 1978;Jacoby, 1983;Medin & Schaffer, 1978). (For a further discussion of these two perspectives, see McClelland & Rumelhart, 1986.) These perspectives on the function of human memory parallel an old debate in the animal-learning literature about whether animals' internal representations are relational or absolute (Hanson, 1959;Reese, 1968). As with

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“…Others have investigated whether tempo changes in one direction are more easily detected than changes in the other direction. Although several studies have found that decreases in tempo are more readily discriminable than increases (Kuhn, 1974;Madsen, 1979), others have found the reverse (Geringer & Madsen, 1984;Wang & Salzberg, 1984;Yarbrough, 1987). Lastly, Wapnick (1980) has examined people's sensitivity to tempo variations that span over a greater range than that studied in past research.…”

Section: Ettects Of Musical Tempo On Cognitive Behaviormentioning

confidence: 99%

Tempo discrimination of musical patterns: Effects due to pitch and rhythmic structure

Boltz

1998

Perception & Psychophysics

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The purpose of this research was to investigate a set of factors that may influence the perceived rate of an auditory event. In a paired-comparison task, subjects were presented with a set of music-like patterns that differed in their relative number of contour changes and in the magnitude ofpitch skips (Experiment 1) as well as in the compatibility of rhythmic accent structure with the arrangement of pitch relations (Experiment 2). Results indicated that, relative to their standard referents, comparison melodies were judged to unfold more slowly when they displayed more changes in pitch direction, greater pitch distances, and an incompatible rhythmic accent structure. These flndings are suggested to stern from an imputed velocity hypo thesis, in which people overgeneralize certain invariant relations that typically occur between melodic and temporal accent structure within Western music.In the study of event perception, one issue of particular interest is the effects ofan event's spatiotemporal structure on cognitive behavior. Any given event, whether it is a melody, speech utterance, or visual scene, is necessarily dynamic in nature and displays an array ofnontemporal (spatial) information that unfolds with a given rate and rhythmicity over a total time span. In considering how this information is processed by the cognitive system, several studies have examined the effects ofan event's rhythm, relative to the array of nontemporal information, on perception and selective attending skills as well as the subsequent remembering of events (see Fraisse, 1978Fraisse, , 1982. Others have focused on the experienced and remembered duration of an event and on how characteristics ofthe information filling a time span influence both the accuracy and the bias ofjudgments (see Allan, 1979;Block, 1979;Fraisse, 1984Fraisse, , 1987. Surprisingly, however, there is relatively little research in which those factors that influence the perception and remembering oftempo information are investigated. This omission in the literature is particularly puzzling in that the rate of informational flow will directly determine an event's total duration and has been found to alter the perceived rhythm of an event (Clarke, 1982;Handel, 1993;Marshburn & Jones, 1985;Pierson, 1976;Povel, 1977). Hence, tempo is a primary aspect ofan event's structure that covaries with other temporal dimensions and, therefore, merits additional investigation, in order to determine its role in cognitive behavior.The purpose ofthe present research is to investigate a set of variables that may influence the perceived tempo ofmusic-like patterns. One such variable involves the po- tential impact of a melody's rhythm and whether the arrangement of temporal accents, relative to the array of melodic structure, can alter the apparent rate of a tune. With the second set offactors, the role ofpitch information and how the overall contour of pitch intervals (i.e., the ups and downs ofpitch), as well as the magnitude of pitch skips, mayaiso exert a significant impact on behav...

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Discrimination of Modulated Beat Tempo by Professional Musicians

Cited by 53 publications

References 7 publications

Adaptation to tempo changes in sensorimotor synchronization: Effects of intention, attention, and awareness

Adaptation to tempo changes in sensorimotor synchronization: Effects of intention, attention, and awareness

Memory for musical tempo: Additional evidence that auditory memory is absolute

Tempo discrimination of musical patterns: Effects due to pitch and rhythmic structure

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