Rhythm Discrimination Task

As an estimate of perceptual sensitivity to auditory rhythm, a two forced-choice discrimination task is prepared. The task objective is to determine whether a comparison rhythm differs from the model. The model rhythm is first looped through twice, and the comparison rhythm is subsequently played just once.

The auditory stimuli consists of 3.2 s rhythmic patterns introduced in (Tierney et al., 2015), originally adapted from (Povel and Essens, 1985), which are formed by the arrangement of 9 percussive conga drum sounds separated by the following inter-onset intervals: 5 x 200-ms; 2 x 400-ms; 1 x 600-ms; and 1 x 800-ms, the re-ordering of which generate distinct rhythmic patterns.

There are 40 trials, divided evenly between "Same" and "Different" correct answers. There is a single rest in the middle of the task. Three practice trials (2 "Different") are given with feedback.

For "Different" trials, the level of difficulty is varied by pairing rhythms that were more or less similar in terms of their pattern of inter-onset intervals, as determined by Alexis Deighton MacIntyre, who is a professionally trained musician and educator. For example, a "Different" trial would be considered to be relatively difficult if both rhythms start with the same pattern of inter-onset intervals, but deviate by a slightly differing order of intervals within the second parts of the two rhythms. The task starts with mostly easier "different" trials, before finishing with mostly harder "different" trials, with the intended goal of easing in participants who might feel less confident with such a task.

Gorilla Open Materials Attribution-NonCommerical Research-Only