CSLI Coglunch: Peter Desain on "On the relation between Rhythm Perception and Production: a Bayesian model"

"On the relation between rhythm perception and production: a Bayesian model"

Peter Desain,

Nijmegen University

Ecological psychology posed the relation between perception and action

in the environment. Newer cognitive theories postulate an intimate

link via mental representations used by both processes. In music the

coding of a rhythm into an observable temporal pattern by the

performer and the subsequent decoding by the listener is thus supposed

to be veridical. However, experiments show that rhythms are not always

produced in accordance with their perceived identity, which is

evidence against a direct perception-action coupling. Using Bayes rule

to formalize competition between mental representations and

non-uniform exposure in a meta-analysis, the contrast almost

disappears. This suggests an optimal adaptation of our perceptual

system to the environment, and it removes the apparent empirical

counterevidence against perception-action theories.

About the Speaker: Peter Desain is part of the 'Music, Mind, Machine'

group at Nijmegen University in The Netherlands. He is visiting this

year at CSLI and CCRMA.