Multisensory integration of drumming actions: musical expertise affects perceived audiovisual asynchrony
We investigated the effect of musical expertise on sensitivity to asynchrony for drumming point-light displays, which varied in their physical characteristics (Experiment 1) or in their degree of audiovisual congruency (Experiment 2). In Experiment 1, 21 repetitions of three tempos x three accents x nine audiovisual delays were presented to four jazz drummers and four novices. In Experiment 2, ten repetitions of two audiovisual incongruency conditions x nine audiovisual delays were presented to 13 drummers and 13 novices. Participants gave forced-choice judgments of audiovisual synchrony. The results of Experiment 1 show an enhancement in experts' ability to detect asynchrony, especially fo…
Action expertise reduces brain activity for audiovisual matching actions: An fMRI study with expert drummers
When we observe someone perform a familiar action, we can usually predict what kind of sound that action will produce. Musical actions are over-experienced by musicians and not by non-musicians, and thus offer a unique way to examine how action expertise affects brain processes when the predictability of the produced sound is manipulated. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to scan 11 drummers and 11 age- and gender-matched novices who made judgments on point-light drumming movements presented with sound. In Experiment 1, sound was synchronized or desynchronized with drumming strikes, while in Experiment 2 sound was always synchronized, but the natural covariation between sound in…