Hierarchical beat perception develops throughout childhood and adolescence and is enhanced in those with musical training.

Abstract

Most music is temporally organized within a metrical hierarchy, having nested periodic patterns that give rise to the experience of stronger (downbeat) and weaker (upbeat) events. Musical meter presumably makes it possible to dance, sing, and play instruments in synchrony with others. It is nevertheless unclear whether or not listeners perceive multiple levels of periodicity simultaneously, and if they do, when and how they learn to do this. We tested children, adolescents, and musically trained and untrained adults with a new meter perception task. We presented excerpts of human-performed music paired with metronomes that matched or mismatched the metrical structure of the music at two hierarchical levels (beat and measure), and asked listeners to provide a rating of fit of metronome and music. Fit ratings suggested that adults with and without musical training were sensitive to both levels of meter simultaneously, but ratings were more strongly influenced by beat-level than by measure-level synchrony. Sensitivity to two simultaneous levels of meter was not evident in children or adolescents. Sensitivity to the beat alone was apparent in the youngest children and increased with age, whereas sensitivity to the measure alone was not present in younger children (5-8-year-olds). These findings suggest a prolonged period of development and refinement of hierarchical beat perception, and surprisingly weak overall ability to attend to two beat levels at the same time across all ages.

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

“…To sum up, in both explicit and implicit perceptual tasks, humans have been shown to be able to detect a beat, rhythmic patterns, and hierarchical metrical structure. These rhythmic abilities were shown in both musically trained and untrained subjects, though especially for explicit tasks [40] and the perception of hierarchical structure [43], training seems to improve performance. Using discrimination tasks akin to explicit timing tasks in humans, some species of birds, rats, crickets, and frogs were shown to discern different rhythmic patterns, but several of these findings can be explained by simple discrimination of single absolute temporal intervals.…”

“…Humans can differentiate between non-isochronous rhythms with regular accents ("strictly metrical rhythms", with a strong beat, see Figure 2B-III for an example) and without regular accents ("weakly-or non-metrical rhythms", with a weaker beat, see Figure 2B-IV for an example), by explicitly rating expected ease of tapping along [40,41], and beat presence [42]. Also, human ratings of rhythmicity show sensitivity to hierarchical structure [43,44].…”

“…Humans [4,48]; Starlings [57]; Pigeons [55]; Canaries [58]; Budgerigars [58]; Crickets [61]; Frogs [59] Rate (non-isochronous) Humans [4] Isochrony Humans [3,[47][48][49]; Rats [51]; Starlings [52,53]; Zebra finches [54,56] Beat; Metrical structure Humans [4,[40][41][42][43][44]; Budgerigars [71] Synchrony between rhythm and metronome Humans [45,46] Paced production: synchronize movement to pacing signal Isochronous Humans [91,92]; Macaques [107][108][109][110]; Budgerigars [111]; Rats [112]; Sea lion [134,135] Beat (non-isochronous) Humans [91,92]; Parrots [136,137]; Sea lion [134,135] Pattern Humans [91,92,100] Metrical hierarchy Humans [91,92,…”

Tapping Force Encodes Metrical Aspects of Rhythm

“…In this respect, it should be noted that the perception of metrical structures in a rhythm strongly relies on subjective experiences and culture (Cameron et al, 2015;London et al, 2017;van der Weij et al, 2017;Bouwer et al, 2018;Nave-Blodgett et al, 2021) and could be shaped by passive exposure to music (Jacoby and McDermott, 2017). For instance, some of the complex rhythms adopted here are common in certain folk music from Balkan, east European, or in jazz music, but almost absent in other cultures (e.g., they are almost absent in the Italian folk music, the state where participants were recruited and tested).…”

“…Based on these perceptual rules we can generate simple rhythms (i.e., sequences with equally spaced perceptual accents); alternatively, we can generate complex rhythms (i.e., sequences with unequally spaced perceptual accents (London, 1995)). The ability to extract a temporal meter from rhythms relies on musical training and on musical exposure to those rhythms (Cameron et al, 2015;London et al, 2017;van der Weij et al, 2017;Bouwer et al, 2018;Nave-Blodgett et al, 2021). This means that certain rhythms may induce, or favor (particularly in participants not previously exposed to those rhythms), perceptual strategies based on non-metrical rules, such as chunking and serial grouping rules (non-metrical coding) (Grahn and Brett, 2007;Grube and Griffiths, 2009;Bouwer et al, 2018).…”