The Relationship between Auditory Imagery and Musical Synchronization Abilities in Musicians

Abstract

Musical ensemble performance requires precise action coordination. To maintain synchrony in the presence of expressive tempo variations, musicians presumably anticipate the sounds that will be produced by their co-performers and coordinate their own anticipated actions with these predictions. Anticipatory auditory images in pitch and time may facilitate such predictions. Two experiments were conducted to examine the contribution of different aspects of auditory imagery abilities to sensorimotor synchronization (SMS) in musicians. In Experiment 1, the acuity of single-tone pitch images was measured by an adjustment method and by adaptive threshold estimation. Different types of finger tapping tasks were administered to assess SMS. Auditory imagery and SMS abilities were found to be positively correlated with one another and with musical experience. Importantly, however, the imagery/synchronization relationship was only partially mediated by musical experience. In Experiment 2, the acuity of pitch images of short melodic sequences and temporal images of simple rhythmic sequences was assessed by adaptive threshold estimation procedures. SMS was measured by finger tapping. An imagery/sychronization relationship was revealed for temporal imagery ability only. The results of the present experiments are consistent with the notion that auditory imagery ability is of importance for musical synchronization. Furthermore, temporal imagery acuity appears to be more closely related to performance in simple SMS tasks than pitch imagery acuity.