Abstract
When humans perform a response task or timing task repeatedly, fluctuations in measures of timing from one action to the next exhibit long-range correlations known as 1/f noise. The origins of 1/f noise in timing have been debated for over 20 years, with one common explanation serving as a default: humans are composed of physiological processes throughout the brain and body that operate over a wide range of timescales, and these processes combine to be expressed as a general source of 1/f noise. To test this explanation, the present study investigated the coupling vs. independence of 1/f noise in timing deviations, key-press durations, pupil dilations, and heartbeat intervals while tapping to an audiovisual metronome. All four dependent measures exhibited clear 1/f noise, regardless of whether tapping was synchronized or syncopated. 1/f spectra for timing deviations were found to match those for key-press durations on an individual basis, and 1/f spectra for pupil dilations matched those in heartbeat intervals. Results indicate a complex, multiscale relationship among 1/f noises arising from common sources, such as those arising from timing functions vs. those arising from autonomic nervous system (ANS) functions. Results also provide further evidence against the default hypothesis that 1/f noise in human timing is just the additive combination of processes throughout the brain and body. Our findings are better accommodated by theories of complexity matching that begin to formalize multiscale coordination as a foundation of human behavior.
Highlights
All behaviors of biological organisms can be viewed as phenomena of coordination, including human behaviors
While the process summation account is called into question, more experiments and analyses are needed to investigate the nature of coupling and independence among simultaneous measures of 1/f noises (e.g., Kello et al, 2008)
COMPLEXITY MATCHING AS MEASURED BY SPECTRAL CONVERGENCE The present experiment and analyses were designed to further investigate the nature of 1/f noise in human behavior by measuring coupling based on a recently formulated theoretical principle known as complexity matching (West et al, 2008; Aquino et al, 2010, 2011)
Summary
All behaviors of biological organisms can be viewed as phenomena of coordination, including human behaviors. Movements of the eyes must be timed relative to those of the hands to draw a picture (Huette et al, 2013); movements of hands must be timed relative to those of the vocal tract to gesture during speech (Kelly et al, 2010); and movements of the legs must be timed with movement of the ball in soccer (Bartlett et al, 2007), just to name a few examples These are all exquisite phenomena of timing and coordination, but it is often useful to study simpler cases to formulate basic principles and theories
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