Production of relatively few rhythms with non-isochronous beats has been studied. So we assess reproduction of most well-formed looped rhythms comprising K=2-11 cues (a uniform piano tone, indicating where participants should tap) and N=3-13 isochronous pulses (a uniform cymbal). Each rhythm had two different cue interonset intervals. We expected that many of the rhythms would be difficult to tap, because of ambiguous non-isochronous beats and syncopations, and that complexity and asymmetry would predict performance. 111 participants tapped 91 rhythms each heard over 129 pulses, starting as soon as they could. Whereas tap-cue concordance in prior studies was generally >> 90%, here only 52.2% of cues received a temporally congruent tap, and only 63% of taps coincided with a cue. Only −2 ms mean tap asynchrony was observed (whereas for non-musicians this value is usually c. −50 ms). Performances improved as rhythms progressed and were repeated, but precision varied substantially between participants and rhythms. Performances were autoregressive and mixed effects cross-sectional time series analyses retaining the integrity of all the individual time series revealed that performance worsened as complexity features K, N, and cue inter-onset interval entropy increased. Performance worsened with increasing R, the Long: short (L: s) cue interval ratio of each rhythm (indexing both complexity and asymmetry). Rhythm evenness and balance, and whether N was divisible by 2 or 3, were not useful predictors. Tap velocities positively predicted cue fulfilment. Our data indicate that study of a greater diversity of rhythms can broaden our impression of rhythm cognition.

中文翻译：

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复杂性和对称性在结构良好的复杂节奏的线索敲击中的作用

已经研究了产生具有非等时节拍的相对较少的节律。因此，我们评估了大多数格式良好的循环节奏的再现，包括 K=2-11 提示（统一的钢琴音调，指示参与者应该敲击的位置）和 N=3-13 等时脉冲（统一的钹）。每个节奏都有两个不同的提示间隔。我们预计许多节奏将难以敲击，因为模棱两可的非等时节拍和切分音，而复杂性和不对称性将预测性能。111 名参与者敲击了 91 种节奏，每个人都听到了超过 129 个脉搏，尽快开始。而在先前的研究中，tap-cue 的一致性通常是 >> 90%，这里只有 52.2% 的提示收到了时间一致的敲击，只有 63% 的敲击与提示重合。仅观察到 -2 ms 平均抽头异步（而对于非音乐家，该值通常为 c. -50 ms）。随着节奏的进展和重复，性能得到改善，但参与者和节奏之间的精确度差异很大。性能是自回归的，混合效应横截面时间序列分析保留了所有单个时间序列的完整性，显示性能随着复杂性特征 K、N 和提示间隔间熵的增加而恶化。性能随着 R 的增加而恶化，每个节奏的长：短（L：s）提示间隔比率（索引复杂性和不对称性）。节奏的均匀性和平衡性，以及 N 是否能被 2 或 3 整除，都不是有用的预测指标。敲击速度正向预测球杆的实现。