Abstract
Movement sequences such as typing or tapping display important interactions among finger movements arising from anticipatory motion (preparing for upcoming events) and coupling (non-independence among fingers). We examined pianists’ finger tapping for the influence of cognitive chunking processes and biomechanical coupling constraints. In a synchronization-continuation task, pianists repeatedly tapped four-finger sequences that differed in terms of the chunks that formed subsequences and in the transitions among physically adjacent or non-adjacent fingers. Chunking influenced intertap intervals, regardless of the particular fingers tapped; the final tap of each chunk was lengthened and less variable relative to other taps. The particular fingers tapped influenced peak finger heights, consistency of motion, and velocity–acceleration patterns, regardless of chunking. Thus, cognitive constraints influenced timing, whereas biomechanical factors influenced motion trajectories. These findings provide an important caveat for study of anticipatory motion by documenting the influence of biomechanical coupling on motion trajectories.
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Notes
The pattern of results did not change when the left-handed participant was dropped from analysis; therefore, analyses included all 12 participants.
We hypothesized that participants might subdivide the 4-tap chunks into two 2-tap subsequences because isochronous patterns are sometimes produced as strong and weak beats, indicated by the lengthening of every second intertap interval (e.g., Nagasaki 1987). Neither accuracy nor precision measures indicated that the 4-tap chunks were subdivided.
Additional analyses directly tested for interactions between finger and sequence position (these analyses do not allow direct tests of the normal/shifted factor) on each dependent variable: intertap interval, coefficients of variation, peak amplitude, time of peak amplitude, and Procrustes correlations. Those analyses yielded the same patterns of results: either sequence position or finger affected timing or motion, with no interactions.
Sometimes a finger’s peak amplitude in the event region immediately before another finger’s tap exceeded that of its peak amplitude in the event region immediately before its own tap. Because fingers’ motion was influenced by previous finger taps, we report analyses for each finger’s peak amplitude in the event region before its own tap. When we conducted peak amplitude analyses using global (computed over the two prior event regions) peak amplitudes, the same pattern of results (main effects of finger, and sequence position by sequence type interactions) emerged.
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Acknowledgments
This work was supported by an NSERC Canada Graduate Scholarship to the first author and by the Canada Research Chairs program and NSERC Grant 298173 to the second author.
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The authors thank David Ostry and Jim Ramsay for their assistance.
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Loehr, J.D., Palmer, C. Cognitive and biomechanical influences in pianists’ finger tapping. Exp Brain Res 178, 518–528 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-006-0760-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-006-0760-8