Abstract
A previous study reported the unique finding that people tapping a beat pattern with the right hand produce larger negative synchronization error than when tapping with the left hand or other effectors, in contrast to previous studies that have shown that the hands tap patterns simultaneously without any synchronization errors. We examined whether the inter-hand difference in synchronization error occurred due to handedness or to a specificity of the beat pattern employed in that study. Two experiments manipulated the hand–beat assignments. A comparison between the identical beat to the pacing signal and a beat with a longer interval excluded the handedness hypothesis and demonstrated that beat patterns with relatively shorter intervals were tapped earlier (Experiment 1). These synchronization errors were not local but occurred consistently throughout the beat patterns. Experiment 2 excluded alternative explanations. These results indicate that the apparent inconsistency in previous studies was due to the specificity of the beat patterns, suggesting that a beat pattern with a relatively shorter interval between hands is tapped earlier than beats with longer intervals. Our finding that the bimanual tapping of different beat patterns produced different synchronization errors suggests that the notion of a central timing system may need to be revised.
Highlights
We often synchronize our body movements to external periodic stimuli
The purpose of Experiment 1 was to examine whether handedness or beat pattern determined the difference in negative mean asynchrony between the right and left hands
This finding supports the beat-pattern hypothesis, suggesting that the beat pattern contributed to the greater negative mean asynchrony in the right hand tapping over the other effectors in Fujii et al (2011)
Summary
We often synchronize our body movements to external periodic stimuli (e.g., our clapping is synchronized to music). SMS has been demonstrated using synchronization tapping tasks in which participants synchronize external stimuli with movements of unilateral (Aschersleben & Prinz, 1995; Nalηacı et al, 2001) and bilateral motor effectors (Aschersleben & Prinz, 1995; Fujii et al, 2011; Vorberg & Hambuch, 1984; Yamanishi et al, 1980). In this task, synchronization error (SE), defined as the time difference between the onset of an external stimulus and the time at which a finger hit the table, is a critical measure of synchronous tapping movements. In one previous study, no differences in SE were found between bilateral hands in a synchronization tapping task that required participants to synchronize the tapping of fingers on both hands to a pacing signal (Aschersleben & Prinz, 1995)
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