The relationship between temporal anticipation and adaptation during sensorimotor synchronisation

Experienced music and dance ensembles can coordinate their movements with extreme temporal precision and accuracy, and yet remain flexible during constantly changing conditions. This sensorimotor synchronization requires individuals to continuously anticipate and adapt to each other's action timing. Individuals differ in their ability to both anticipate and adapt, however little is understood about the relationship between these skills. The present study used paced finger tapping tasks to examine the relationship between anticipatory skill and adaptive (error correction) processes. In addition, the contribution of anticipatory and adaptive mechanisms, to individuals' synchronization precision and accuracy was investigated. Adaptive ability was estimated by the degree of temporal error correction that participants (N=52) engaged in when synchronizing with a 'virtual partner', that is, an auditory pacing signal that modulated its timing based on the participant's performance. Anticipation was measured by calculating a prediction index that reflected the degree to which participant's inter-tap intervals led or lagged behind inter-onset intervals in tempo-changing sequences. A correlational analysis revealed a significant positive relationship between prediction/tracking indices and error correction estimates, suggesting that temporal anticipation and adaptation interact to facilitate synchronization performance. Hierarchical regression analyses revealed that adaptation was the best predictor of synchronization accuracy, whereas both adaptation and anticipation predicted synchronization precision. Together these results demonstrate a relationship between anticipatory and adaptive mechanisms and indicate that individual differences in these two abilities are predictive of synchronization performance.