Executive control and working memory are involved in sub-second repetitive motor timing

Linus Holm,Guy Madison,Fredrik Ullén,Olympia Karampela

doi:10.1007/s00221-016-4839-6

Linus Holm, Guy Madison + Show 2 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-016-4839-6

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Abstract

The nature of the relationship between timing and cognition remains poorly understood. Cognitive control is known to be involved in discrete timing tasks involving durations above 1 s, but has not yet been demonstrated for repetitive motor timing below 1 s. We examined the latter in two continuation tapping experiments, by varying the cognitive load in a concurrent task. In Experiment 1, participants repeated a fixed three finger sequence (low executive load) or a pseudorandom sequence (high load) with either 524-, 733-, 1024- or 1431-ms inter-onset intervals (IOIs). High load increased timing variability for 524 and 733-ms IOIs but not for the longer IOIs. Experiment 2 attempted to replicate this finding for a concurrent memory task. Participants retained three letters (low working memory load) or seven letters (high load) while producing intervals (524- and 733-ms IOIs) with a drum stick. High load increased timing variability for both IOIs. Taken together, the experiments demonstrate that cognitive control processes influence sub-second repetitive motor timing.

Highlights

Consider a simple rhythmic motor task such as tapping at a regular pulse with a finger
The present study directly examined the influence of cognitive control on subsecond timing by employing the synchronization-continuation task (Stevens 1886; Wing and Kristofferson 1973)
In Experiment 1, we addressed the influence of executive functions on timing variability

Summary

Introduction

Consider a simple rhythmic motor task such as tapping at a regular pulse with a finger. A dual-task study involving finger tapping found no significant effect of cognitive control on repetitive motor timing variability in the range from 0.5 to 2.0 s (Holm et al 2013). We compared temporal intervals below and above 1 s to test the extent to which executive functions are involved in the control of shorter and longer interval durations, the latter being predicted by the previous literature These predictions are based on the assumption that the secondary tasks (i.e., the generation of a repeating sequence in deterministic and a pseudorandom pattern in random) are performed accurate across conditions, so that timing variability is not upheld at the cost of sacrificing pattern reproduction fidelity or decreasing executive load. The sound presentation and recording software was run on a PC with the FreeDOS real-time operating system and communicated via MIDI with the response and stimulus devices

Participants

Results and discussion

Procedure

Results

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