PONE-D-19-20938

Musical expertise generalizes to superior temporal scaling in a Morse code tapping task

PLOS ONE

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Reviewers' comments:

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Comments to the Author

1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: The present study investigated effects of motor training of temporal scaling in musicians and non-musicians. The learning curve differed between the two groups. At the end of learning, musicians were better at reproducing the learned Morse code pattern at faster and slower speeds compared with the non-musicians. The study investigated a novel and intriguing issue in the field of motor control. However, I have several concerns particularly on the Introduction and Methods as follows.

First, the present Introduction is currently not clear for readers with respect to significance of the study. This can be largely improved by arguing the previous studies relevant to this study, which seems insufficient in the present manuscript. For example, temporal scaling has been already studied in musicians (e.g. Furuya and Soecthing 2012 J Neurophysiol), and therefore to argue them in the Introduction will make both novelty and significance of the study clearer. Similarly, neurophysiological studies such as bird songs have been also studied this issue extensively (Long and Fee 2008 Nature). Such neurophysiological studies will aid in deepening the understanding of what mechanisms can underlie the temporal scaling of sequential motor actions.

Second, it is better to provide a rationale of investigating the Morse code production task rather than piano playing, even though the latter is more naturalistic to the present participants. In general, a learning task used for sequential movements is a serial reaction time task (e.g. Karni et al. 1998 PNAS). As far as I know, the present motor task is not as frequently used as such a task, which makes me wonder a particular reason behind.

Related to this, the present Discussion can be largely improved by arguing an issue of signal-dependent noise in motor commands (Harris and Wolpert 1998 Nature) and/or Fitt's law. When moving faster, effects of this noise is increased, and vice versa. This neurophysiological mechanism will be crucial to shed light on improved temporal scaling with training.

There are some minor comments.

Abstract: page 8, line 7

What do you mean by "controls"?

Introduction: page 9 second paragraph

While the authors state "It has also been shown that temporal precision can be improved by increasing movement speed (6).", this claim contradicts with the Fitts' Law. Please explain more.

Figures are overall coarse in terms of resolution, which is better to be improved. Also I wonder if the color figures are really necessary.

Reviewer #2: Review of „Musical expertise generalizes to superior temporal scaling in a Morse code tapping task“

by Slayton, Romero-Sosa, Stone, Buonomano & Viskontas

This paper describes a highly original experimental study which contrasts the timing performance of a simple rhythmic pattern (actually the word time in Morse code) by expert musicians vs. non-musicians. Participants practiced the corresponding temporal pattern at a fixed speed in 15 blocks of 15 trials each for four days, with detailed feedback about the accuracy of each production as compared to the target pattern. On day 5, participants were to produce the trained rhythmic pattern at each of three speeds: the original one, twice, or half as fast as the trained pattern. The goal of the study was to test the hypothesis that professional musicians are superior in temporal scaling, i.e., to transfer a rhythmic temporal pattern acquired at one fixed tempo to slower and to faster tempi. The main findings are summarized by the authors as

„Although there was no significant difference in performance at the end of training at the standard speed, musicians were significantly better at temporal scaling—i.e., at reproducing the learned Morse code pattern at faster and slower speeds. (…) Both musicians and non-musicians exhibited a Weber-speed effect, where absolute temporal precision sharpened when producing patterns at the faster speed.“ Not really unexpected..

Minor comments.

Figures. The graphical quality is embarrassingly low. Here is an enlarged snapshot of task and stimuli:

Who can decode the details?

P. 3, 3rd par: „temporal variability“: as assessed by the standard deviation?

p. 4, top: Define NMRSE – not all readers will be familiar with it. Report whether you normalize by mean or by range.

p. 8, 2nd par: replace „time-independent“ by „tempo independent“.

p. 8, 2nd par: „Between each element that comprises a letter and the first element of another letter was a dot length pause, and between the last element of a letter and the first element of another letter was a dash-length pause.“ Why don’t you give just the sequence time-intervals to produce?

For figure see doc-file.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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Submitted filename: Review Slayton etal PLoS1.docx

Musical expertise generalizes to superior temporal scaling in a Morse code tapping task

PONE-D-19-20938R1

Dear Dr. Slayton,

We are pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it complies with all outstanding technical requirements.

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Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

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Reviewer #1: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed

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2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: The authors revised the manuscript in a satisfactory manner, which improved readability a lot. I therefore believe the current manuscript deserves to be published as it is.

Reviewer #2: The authors have taken care of all of my comments and recommendation (most of which were minor anyway.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: Yes: Dirk Vorberg