Moving stimuli enhance beat timing and sensorimotor coupling in vision.

Vision has long been known for its inefficiency in beat perception and synchronization. However, this has been challenged by the finding that moving stimuli (bouncing ball or moving bar) can significantly improve visual beat synchronization. The present study examined two possible mechanisms for this phenomenon: visual motion facilitates temporal processing or promotes sensorimotor coupling. Instead of a single visual object (such as a ball or bar), random-dot kinematograms (RDKs) were used to construct visual motion sequences to avoid confounding factors, such as changes in trajectory and velocity. Experiment 1 showed that RDKs improved beat-timing discrimination compared with visual flashes, but auditory tones were still superior to RDKs. In Experiment 2, synchronized movements improved auditory-tone beat timing but impaired visual-flash beat timing, with no effect on RDK beat timing. Experiment 3 indicated that the regression slope of the phase correction response in RDKs was higher than that in visual flashes but still lower than that in auditory tones. The results showed that moving stimuli enhances both temporal processing (Experiment 1) and sensorimotor coupling (Experiments 2 and 3) in vision, but to a lesser degree, with audition retaining an advantage. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Separating the effects of stimulus-gravity compatibility and stimulus-response compatibility on visuomotor synchronization.

Synchronizing finger movements with the motion of a visual target is especially successful when tapping downward with a downward-moving stimulus. One explanation is that the directional compatibility of stimulus movement (downward) and synchronized action (downward) enhances the synchronization performance. Another is that the performance is enhanced by the directional compatibility of stimulus movement (downward) and gravity (downward). This study separated effects of stimulus-response compatibility (SRC) and stimulus-gravity compatibility (SGC) by manipulating both the stimulus movement direction and the tapping direction. Results showed a robust effect of SGC on the synchronization performance-that is, more directional compatibility between stimulus movement-and gravity yielded more stable synchronization. SRC also influenced the performance, although this effect was only pronounced in fast sequences. The SGC effect suggests that the brain can exploit prior knowledge of gravity direction to enhance timing in visuomotor synchronization. The SRC effect suggests that the coding of visual events and synchronized actions might operate in a common representational medium, and the influence of sequence rate might reflect the rate limitation of information transfer from the visual system to motor system. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).