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…