title: Temporal stability of rhythmic tapping "on" and "off the beat": a developmental study.
abstract: This study, following a dynamic pattern approach, examines age-related differences in the stability of unimanual rhythmic perception-action patterns. Thirty-six children, aged 7, 9, and 11 years, attempted to synchronize their finger tapping to the beats of an auditory metronome, either "on the beat" (i.e., in-phase coordination), or "off the beat" (i.e., antiphase coordination). The temporal stability of these perception-action patterns was measured by the variability of the relative phase between taps and auditory events and by the critical frequency, that is, the frequency at which a loss of stability was observed when the metronome frequency was increased. Age-related differences in stability were found for both relative phase variability and critical frequency. These findings suggest that the relative phase dynamics underlying perception-action coordination patterns change with age in the direction of an increased temporal stability.
authors.affiliation: Department of Educational Sciences, University Utrecht, The Netherlands. m.volman@fss.uu.nl
authors.forename: M J
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Volman
authors.forename: R H
authors.initials: RH
authors.lastname: Geuze
mesh_terms: D001288:Attention; D002648:Child; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009043:Motor Activity; D011571:Psychoacoustics; D012016:Reference Values; D013998:Time Perception