Entrainment to Audiomotor Feedback: Preliminary Evidence and Model
Presentations
Overview
Overview
abstract
Humans are remarkably proficient at picking up the beat underlying an auditory rhythm and using
it as a temporal scaffold for action. But do sounds we make ourselves have the same effect on
us? In this presentation, we will share preliminary evidence supporting an affirmative answer, and
spell out some surprising implications for our theoretical understanding of rhythm perception and
production. Our experiment consists of a simple synchronization-continuation task with auditory
feedback from taps. In some trials, the feedback from either the last synchronization tap or the
first continuation tap is slightly delayed. Preliminary data from nonmusicians (N=9) suggest that
these transient delays induce delays in the subsequent tap, both during continuation ( 20ms,
p < .001) and during synchronization ( 9ms, p = .003), analogous to the "phase correction
responses" induced by delayed metronome clicks. The continuation result is consistent with similar
results from Wing (1977) but inconsistent with the classic Wing-Krisofferson "open loop" model of
continuation tapping; the synchronization result is novel, and is inconsistent with classic "error
correction" models of synchronization, but instead suggests a "mixed resetting" model as proposed
by Hary and Moore (1987). We model these results by assuming that both the metronome and the
tap feedback are providing input to the same oscillator representing our perception of a beat. This
oscillator entrains partially to the metronome and partially to the tap sound and determines the
timing of the next tap. Our model, based on the PIPPET model of beat perception (Cannon 2021),
forms a bridge between motor and perceptual measures of entrainment. Entrainment by both
external and feedback cues helps to account for motor influences on rhythm perception, and offers
a new perspective on the blurring of the self/other distinction during synchronization. Further,
the idea of that we entrain to our own motor feedback provides a plausible new hypothesis for
the core evolutionary function of our sense of rhythm: anticipating the feedback from our own
rhythmic actions (e.g., gait).
