Determinants of temporal pattern perception

Determinants of temporal pattern perception

Essens, P.J.M.D.
TNO Technische Menskunde

1995

Rhythms differ in how well they can be remembered and reproduced. The cen-tral thesis of this dissertation is that people use a mental time scale to structure rhythms. A mental time scale can be thought of as a sequence of beats separated by equal time intervals. It is used to break a rhythm down into smaller parts which can be coded further. In principle any time scale could be used. The assumption is that the more beats of a particular mental time scale match accented ticks or tones of the rhythm the greater the chance is that this time scale will be selected. A model is formulated that predicts the relative quality of representation of rhythms on the basis of the quality of match between a mental time scale and a rhythm. The model is formulated as an algorithm that calculates a score reflecting the quality of match of hypothetical time scales with varying time unit and varying location in a rhythm. In analysing large sets of rhythms, categories were defined based on a quality of match score. Experiments with normal subjects confirmed the prediction that accuracy of reproduction was related to quality of match.

Perception

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:422571e8-aae4-4817-8ea5-c3baed7de200

8049

TNO, Soesterberg

doctoral thesis