title: Sensorimotor synchronization with adaptively timed sequences.
abstract: Most studies of human sensorimotor synchronization require participants to coordinate actions with computer-controlled event sequences that are unresponsive to their behavior. In the present research, the computer was programmed to carry out phase and/or period correction in response to asynchronies between taps and tones, and thereby to modulate adaptively the timing of the auditory sequence that human participants were synchronizing with, as a human partner might do. In five experiments the computer's error correction parameters were varied over a wide range, including "uncooperative" settings that a human synchronization partner could not (or would not normally) adopt. Musically trained participants were able to maintain synchrony in all these situations, but their behavior varied systematically as a function of the computer's parameter settings. Computer simulations were conducted to infer the human participants' error correction parameters from statistical properties of their behavior (means, standard deviations, auto- and cross-correlations). The results suggest that participants maintained a fixed gain of phase correction as long as the computer was cooperative, but changed their error correction strategies adaptively when faced with an uncooperative computer.
authors.affiliation: Haskins Laboratories, 300 George Street, New Haven, CT 06511-6624, United States. repp@haskins.yale.edu
authors.forename: Bruno H
authors.initials: BH
authors.lastname: Repp
authors.forename: Peter E
authors.initials: PE
authors.lastname: Keller
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D001288:Attention; D003071:Cognition / Q000502:physiology; D003201:Computers; D006801:Humans; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D009146:Music; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology*; D011930:Reaction Time; D013998:Time Perception; D014584:User-Computer Interface