Abstract
The purpose of the present study was to determine whether and how single finger tapping in synchrony with sound sequences contributed to the auditory processing of them. The participants learned two unfamiliar sound sequences via different methods. In the tapping condition, they learned an auditory sequence while they tapped in synchrony with each sound onset. In the no tapping condition, they learned another sequence while they kept pressing a key until the sequence ended. After these learning sessions, we presented the two melodies again and recorded event-related potentials (ERPs). During the ERP recordings, 10% of the tones within each melody deviated from the original tones. An analysis of the grand average ERPs showed that deviant stimuli elicited a significant P300 in the tapping but not in the no-tapping condition. In addition, the significance of the P300 effect in the tapping condition increased as the participants showed highly synchronized tapping behavior during the learning sessions. These results indicated that single finger tapping promoted the conscious detection and evaluation of deviants within the learned sequences. The effect was related to individuals’ musical ability to coordinate their finger movements along with external auditory events.
Highlights
The modulation of body movement in synchrony with external sensory inputs is a unique ability of humans and other animals that are capable of vocal learning (Hasegawa et al, 2010)
The P300 amplitude was negatively correlated with the synchronization errors in the tapping task (Figure 4D), indicating that the effect of synchronized tapping was supported by an audiomotor network that was developed by the longitudinal musical trainings
In order to make a clear contrast with our previous study (Kamiyama et al, 2010), here we examined the synchronized tapping effect only in skilled amateur musicians with an experimental procedure based on that study
Summary
The modulation of body movement in synchrony with external sensory inputs is a unique ability of humans and other animals that are capable of vocal learning (Hasegawa et al, 2010). Even 5–24-month-old infants showed an immature ability to modulate their body movements to rhythmical sounds (Zentner and Eerola, 2010). Human adults often show voluntary finger and foot tapping, and nod their head in synchrony with music, the reason why these movements are synchronized with auditory inputs is unclear. Zentner and Eerola (2010) suggested that the propensity for coordinating auditory rhythmic pulses with movements facilitated the alignment of movement patterns with environmental and social sounds of adaptive significance. We assume that involuntary synchronization of body movements has another practical role, namely to facilitate the learning of auditory information. We examined the impact of single finger tapping on the memorization of sound sequences
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