Abstract
Perception of a regular beat in music is inferred from different types of accents. For example, increases in loudness cause intensity accents, and the grouping of time intervals in a rhythm creates temporal accents. Accents are expected to occur on the beat: when accents are “missing” on the beat, the beat is more difficult to find. However, it is unclear whether accents occurring off the beat alter beat perception similarly to missing accents on the beat. Moreover, no one has examined whether intensity accents influence beat perception more or less strongly than temporal accents, nor how musical expertise affects sensitivity to each type of accent. In two experiments, we obtained ratings of difficulty in finding the beat in rhythms with either temporal or intensity accents, and which varied in the number of accents on the beat as well as the number of accents off the beat. In both experiments, the occurrence of accents on the beat facilitated beat detection more in musical experts than in musical novices. In addition, the number of accents on the beat affected beat finding more in rhythms with temporal accents than in rhythms with intensity accents. The effect of accents off the beat was much weaker than the effect of accents on the beat and appeared to depend on musical expertise, as well as on the number of accents on the beat: when many accents on the beat are missing, beat perception is quite difficult, and adding accents off the beat may not reduce beat perception further. Overall, the different types of accents were processed qualitatively differently, depending on musical expertise. Therefore, these findings indicate the importance of designing ecologically valid stimuli when testing beat perception in musical novices, who may need different types of accent information than musical experts to be able to find a beat. Furthermore, our findings stress the importance of carefully designing rhythms for social and clinical applications of beat perception, as not all listeners treat all rhythms alike.
Highlights
In musical rhythm, we often perceive a regular beat
It is well established that different types of accents contribute to beat perception, it is unclear whether these different accents contribute to beat perception in differing ways. It is unknown whether mismatches between the accent structure and the perceived beat are perceived on the beat versus off the beat. We address these issues by examining the contributions to beat perception of two types of accents: temporal accents and intensity accents
We explored how the structure of different types of accents in rhythm influences the perception of a regular beat
Summary
When accents occur at regularly spaced points in time, a listener can perceive a beat in a rhythm [2], and the beat generally coincides with accented events [1]. The relationship between the structure of accents in music and the perceived beat is flexible, and as such, the perception of a beat is regarded as a psychological construct [6,7,8,9]. A beat is often embedded in a hierarchical organization with several nested levels of perceived regularity, the metrical structure. The beat is the most salient level of regularity. The faster regularity at a hierarchically lower level than the beat is termed a subdivision of the beat. The beat can be a subdivision of a slower, higher-order regularity of more and less salient beats, which is sometimes referred to as meter
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