Table 1.
Subject Age Group Information.
Table 2.
Musical Experience Categorization Information.
Fig 1.
The participants practiced tapping to the sound for 20 beats (practice phase), and then immediately tapped to the sound for 20 more beats during which time their taps were recorded (test phase). The participants were asked to tap along to the beat throughout the entire task such that their taps occurred at the exact same time as the drum sounds.
Table 3.
Dependent measures of tapping performance.
Fig 2.
Beat Synchronization Changes Throughout Life.
(A) The ability to tap to a beat improves with age into middle adulthood (ages 22 to 42.9), and then declines in older age, as assessed by tapping variability. (B) Anticipation of the beat was least accurate for children and older adults, as assessed by asynchrony. Error bars represent one standard error of the mean.
Fig 3.
Non-Linear Development of Beat Synchronization Throughout Life.
A cubic model fit the data to describe age-related changes in tapping variability, accounting for 42.6% of variance in tapping performance (Y = 85.055 + -5.192*X + .123*X2 +-.001*X3).
Fig 4.
Non-Linear Development of Beat Synchronization Throughout Life.
A cubic model fit the data to describe age-related changes in tapping asynchrony, accounting for 7.2% of variance in tapping performance (F(3,142) = 3.669, p = .014; Y = 97.375 + 6.77*X +-.175*X2 + .001*X3).
Fig 5.
The Relationship Between Beat Synchronization and Music Experience.
Individuals with musical experience perform better on a tapping task in comparison to individuals without musical experience, as assessed by two measures of tapping performance: (A) variability and (B) asynchrony. Error bars represent one standard error of the mean.