Self-sustained beat perception develops through adolescence, and is predictive of phonology

• In Event: Poster Session 09
  In Poster Session: PS 09 Topic - Perceptual, Sensory, Motor

Abstract

Rhythm and beat perception are critical for synchronized musical movement (e.g., walking, dancing) and may also influence some aspects of speech perception. It is assumed that listeners experience the beat as a quasi-isochronous pattern of prominent time points, inferred from regularly occurring events in the musical surface, and that they can sustain this percept even in the absence of events that reinforce it. However, few studies have attempted to disentangle the surface information from the internal beat percept, and no studies to our knowledge have done so with young listeners. In this experiment, we presented listeners aged 4-23 with a rich musical excerpt that induced one of two beat patterns, followed by a prolonged ambiguous phase during which they heard a rhythm that could match either of the two beat patterns. In a final probe phase, listeners indicated whether a drummer did or did not match the beat of the music. Younger children (age 4-7 years) did not perform above chance. Children aged 8-17 and adults accurately matched the probe with the induced beat, and children aged 12-17 performed with no statistically significant difference from adults. Since previous studies have suggested that rhythm ability is related to phonological awareness, we also administered the Comprehensive Test of Phonological Processing (CTOPP). A hierarchical regression revealed that performance in our task was a significant predictor of phonology, accounting for 4.1% additional variance, above and beyond age (9% variance) and music/dance training (3.6% variance). Overall, these results suggest older (but not younger) children are capable of self-sustained and long-lasting beat perception, which is related to phonological language ability. However, self-sustained beat skills do not become adult-like until adolescence, suggesting that beat perception may have a more gradual developmental trajectory than has been previously assumed.

Authors

• Karli M Nave, University of Nevada Las Vegas
  Presenting Author

• Joel Snyder, University of Nevada, Las Vegas
  Non-Presenting Author

• Erin E Hannon, University of Nevada, Las Vegas
  Non-Presenting Author