Short Latency Effects of Auditory Frequency Change on Human Motor Behavior

Boasson, Amos; Granot, Roni

doi:10.1080/25742442.2019.1698264

Cited by 2 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 76 publications

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“…Regardless of category, these established models track rhythms based on the phase, period, and amplitude of sound patterns, but not their pitch. However, there is a wealth of evidence to suggest that pitch affects the perceived tempo of a rhythm (Boltz, 2011;Collier & Hubbard, 1998;Pazdera & Trainor, 2024), as do the size (Ammirante, Thompson, & Russo, 2011;Ammirante & Thompson, 2012;Boasson & Granot, 2012;Boltz, 1998) and direction of pitch changes (Boasson & Granot, 2019;Gordon & Ataucusi, 2021;Herrmann, Henry, Grigutsch, & Obleser, 2013;Her-rmann, Henry, Scharinger, & Obleser, 2014). In the present study, we sought to identify whether previously identified effects of pitch height on subjective tempo ratings (Pazdera & Trainor, 2024) also influence the timing of sensorimotor synchrony.…”

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Pitch biases sensorimotor synchronization to auditory rhythms

Pazdera,

Trainor

2024

Preprint

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Current models of rhythm perception propose that humans track musical beats using the phase, period, and amplitude of sound patterns. However, a growing body of evidence suggests that pitch can also influence the perceived timing of auditory signals. We recently discovered an inverted U-shaped relation between pitch and subjective ratings of tempo (Pazdera & Trainor, 2024), with subjective tempo increasing with pitch between A2 (110 Hz) and A4 (440 Hz), reaching a peak somewhere between A4 and A6 (1760 Hz), and declining again before reaching A7 (3520 Hz). In the present study, we conducted experiments to investigate whether pitch also affects sensorimotor synchronization timing. To do so, we asked participants to synchronize with a repeating tone, whose pitch on each trial was drawn from the same set as in our previous subjective rating experiments. In Experiment 1, we observed U-shaped patterns in both mean asynchrony and continuation tapping rates, with participants tapping earliest and fastest when synchronizing to the same moderately high pitches that produced the fastest subjective tempo in our previous study. In Experiment 2, we found that extremely high pitches still produced slower timing than moderately high pitches when participants were exposed to an exclusively high-pitched context. We advocate for the incorporation of pitch into models of rhythm perception, and we discuss the possibility that there may exist two pitch-based influences on perceived tempo: a top-down learned correlation between higher pitches and faster timing, and a bottom-up U-shaped effect of stimulus fundamental frequency on neural dynamics.

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confidence: 99%

Pitch biases sensorimotor synchronization to auditory rhythms

Pazdera,

Trainor

2024

Preprint

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Pitch-induced illusory percepts of time

Pazdera,

Trainor

2024

Atten Percept Psychophys

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Past research suggests that pitch height can influence the perceived tempo of speech and music, such that higher-pitched signals seem faster than lower-pitched ones. However, previous studies have analyzed perceived tempo across a relatively limited range of fundamental frequencies. To investigate whether this higher-equals-faster illusion generalizes across the wider range of human hearing, we conducted a series of five experiments. We asked participants to compare the tempo of repeating tones from six different octaves and with 15 different interonset intervals to a metronomic standard tempo. In Experiments 1–3, we observed an inverted U-shaped effect of pitch on perceived tempo, with the perceived tempo of piano tones peaking between A4 (440 Hz) and A5 (880 Hz) and decreasing at lower and higher frequencies. This bias was consistent across base tempos and was only slightly attenuated by synchronous tapping with the repeating tones. Experiment 4 tested synthetic complex tones to verify that this nonlinearity generalizes beyond the piano timbre and that it was not related to the presence of low-frequency mechanical noise present in our piano tones. Experiment 5 revealed that the decrease in perceived tempo at extremely high octaves can be abolished by exposing participants to only high-pitched tones. Together, our results suggest that perceived tempo depends more on the relative pitch within a context than on absolute pitch and that tempo biases may invert or taper off beyond a two-octave range. We relate this context-dependence to human vocal ranges and propose that illusory tempo effects are strongest within pitch ranges consistent with human vocalization.

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Short Latency Effects of Auditory Frequency Change on Human Motor Behavior

Cited by 2 publications

References 76 publications

Pitch biases sensorimotor synchronization to auditory rhythms

Pitch biases sensorimotor synchronization to auditory rhythms

Pitch-induced illusory percepts of time

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