Keeping an eye on the violinist: motor experts show superior timing consistency in a visual perception task

Abstract

Common coding theory states that perception and action may reciprocally induce each other. Consequently, motor expertise should map onto perceptual consistency in specific tasks such as predicting the exact timing of a musical entry. To test this hypothesis, ten string musicians (motor experts), ten non-string musicians (visual experts), and ten non-musicians were asked to watch progressively occluded video recordings of a first violinist indicating entries to fellow members of a string quartet. Participants synchronised with the perceived timing of the musical entries. Results revealed significant effects of motor expertise on perception. Compared to visual experts and non-musicians, string players not only responded more accurately, but also with less timing variability. These findings provide evidence that motor experts’ consistency in movement execution—a key characteristic of expert motor performance—is mirrored in lower variability in perceptual judgements, indicating close links between action competence and perception.

Observing Expertise-Related Actions Leads to Perfect Time Flow Estimations

“…In other words, the more the observed action is familiar and well known at the level of performance, the easier it is to estimate its temporal duration. This inference is consistent with previous findings that motor experience improves precision in action anticipation [7]–[8] as, for example, with string musicians in predicting the entry of sound produced by a violin when compared to non-string musicians and non-musicians [9]. Furthermore, the active and dynamical internal action simulation seems to operate more efficiently when observers are allowed to form and pace the actions freely such as when viewing an implied action.…”

“…Indeed, these motor experts are capable, through the “reading” of the kinematics of an action, to express a sophisticated internal neural mechanism to decode the action’s dynamical development [7]. Several studies already show that motor experts possess detailed internal action-specific simulations that permit fast and precise evaluations particularly for actions that pertain to their domain of expertise [7], [9]–[10]. In fact, this interpretation is based on the notion that the observation of an action, no matter if it is “implied” as in a static picture [11]–[15] or “apparent” as in a video-clip [16]–[19], induces muscle-specific brain activations as if the observed actions are internally performed.…”

Rhythm in joint action: psychological and neurophysiological mechanisms for real-time interpersonal coordination

“…A subsequent study on the role of mental imagery revealed that individual differences in the coordination of sounds and body movements in piano duos were positively correlated with performance on a task assessing the vividness of anticipatory auditory imagery [10]. Moreover, studies targeting temporal prediction directly have shown that the precision of sensorimotor synchronization in real and virtual interpersonal coordination is positively correlated with temporal prediction abilities [43,44], which are, in turn, correlated with auditory imagery abilities [45].…”

Body movement enhances the extraction of temporal structures in auditory sequences

“…Musicians are rhythmically trained and typically perform better in sensorimotor tasks (Chen et al, 2008a;Repp & Doggett, 2006;Franek, Mates, Radil, Beck, & Pöppel, 1994) and cross-modal timing tasks (Wöllner & Cañal-Bruland, 2010;Pecenka & Keller, 2009). It was not surprising that their training enabled them to analyze the temporal structure and establish stable pulse overall, even in the absence of movement.…”