Musical training enhances temporal adaptation of auditory-motor synchronization

To coordinate their actions successfully with auditory events, individuals must be able to adapt their behaviour flexibly to environmental changes. Previous work has shown that musical training enhances the flexibility to synchronize behaviour with a wide range of stimulus periods. The current experiment investigated whether musical training enhances temporal adaptation to period perturbations as listeners tapped with a metronome, and whether this enhancement is specific to individuals’ Spontaneous Production Rates (SPRs; individuals’ natural uncued rates). Both musicians and nonmusicians adapted more quickly to period perturbations that slowed down than to those that sped up. Importantly, musicians adapted more quickly to all period perturbations than nonmusicians. Fits of a damped harmonic oscillator model to the tapping measures confirmed musicians’ faster adaptation and greater responsiveness to period perturbations. These results suggest that, even when the task is tailored to individual SPRs, musical training increases the flexibility with which individuals can adapt to changes in their environment during auditory-motor tasks.