Abstract
As observed in musical ensembles, people synchronize with a leader together with other people. This study aimed to investigate whether interdependency with a partner improves performance accuracy in rhythm synchronization with the leader. Participants performed a synchronization task via auditory signal by finger tapping in which two followers simultaneously synchronized with a leader: an isochronous metronome or a human leader with or without feedback from the followers. This task was conducted with and without cross-feedback (CFB) between the followers. The followers’ weak mutual tempo tracking via the CFB and the followers’ strong tempo tracking to the leader improved the tempo stability. Additionally, because the interdependency between the followers was weaker than the followers’ dependency on the human leader, the CFB did not enlarge the synchronization error between the human leader and the followers, which occurred in synchronization with the metronome. Thus, the CFB between the followers contributed to accuracy in synchronization with the human leader. The results suggest that in ensembles, players should strongly attend to the leader and should attempt to be less conscious of partners to maintain the appropriate balance between influences from the leader and partners.
Highlights
One might consider that if highly trained musicians perform the same task, they can show high accuracy and some mutual dependence with other players
Multiple comparisons showed that the mean of the inter-tap intervals (ITIs) was significantly smaller under the M conditions than under the HNF and HF conditions, and it was significantly smaller under the HNF conditions than under the HF conditions. These results showed that the CFB between followers did not affect followers’ tempos; follower’s tempo were faster under the human leader conditions than under the M conditions, and the feedback from the followers to the leader sped up the followers’ tempos
This study aimed to investigate the contribution of the CFB between the followers to performance accuracy and stability in synchronization with a human leader
Summary
One might consider that if highly trained musicians perform the same task, they can show high accuracy and some mutual dependence with other players. Okano et al conducted this SC task with and without a partner and found that the ITI gradually decreased in the SC task with a partner These previous studies show differences in performance accuracy and temporal dependency with dyad rhythm synchronization from isochronous sequences. This study aims to reveal what temporal dependencies between the leader and the follower and between followers affect performance accuracy For these purposes, we conducted an auditory synchronization task using finger tapping between one leader and two followers. The leaders were a constant tempo (700 ms) metronome (M condition) and a human leader who attempted to maintain a target tempo (700 ms) without or with feedback from the followers (HNF and HF conditions, respectively) Under these leader conditions, the followers synchronized with the leader’s timing presented via auditory signals without or with feedback from their partner (NFB and CFB conditions, respectively). The leader’s tap timing was presented to the followers as a 500 Hz pure tone, and the followers’ tap timing was submitted to the leader and the partner as 1,000 or 2,000 Hz, respectively
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