Certain songs have a way of getting into your head and staying there for a while. We’ve covered the cognitive side of earworms before. These songs that haunt us tend to have a recognizable tempo or beat—usually one that we can move to.
Lady Gaga has given us a number of earworms, including Poker Face, which will embed itself in your brain at an upbeat 118 beats per minute (BPM):
The beat is so familiar that you can probably sing along within a few seconds of hearing the song. However, when Gaga gets acoustic, she changes the tempo to around 86 BPM, which is a striking difference and may be less infectious than the faster version.
The speed of a song can have a critical influence on how listeners interpret the music. Dolly Parton’s classic hit “Jolene” is a clear petition from one woman to another to not “take her man.” However, when you slow down the song, it suddenly sounds like a narrative from a male singer with an altogether different message and mood. While this slowed down version could stand alone as its own single, anyone familiar with Dolly’s original knows the slow version is a fraud.
Previous work by Justin London and colleagues found that we tend to struggle with certain tempo judgments when the speed of a song is altered. In that study, the researchers played classic Motown R&B hits, along with time-stretched versions that were sped up or slowed down without altering pitch or timbre. Overall, listeners were able to decipher whether a song was faster or slower than the original. However, listeners often perceived sped up versions to be faster than they actually were. For example, if a song was originally 105 BPM and then sped up to 110 BPM, the new version is perceived to be faster than another song that has an actual rate of 115 BPM.
The authors called this a tempo anchoring effect (TAE) because listener judgments of song rate were anchored to prior experience with that song.
What could improve our judgment of song tempo? One way that many listeners feel the beat is to tap along with their foot or bob their head. That’s because bodily movement is an excellent way to find the pulse and synchronize to a given rhythm. This is a known phenomenon in both musicians and nonmusicians. Of course, some people find it difficult to follow a beat even with movement. Take, for instance, Elaine from Seinfeld:
Except for the Elaines among us, tapping along seems to be a great way to entrain to the beat of a song. In fact, I’m currently involved in a musical production at the Hale Center Theatre, and during rehearsals the music director encourages each of us to conduct the songs as we sing them. Her aim is for us to engage a kinesthetic synchrony with the music, so that we perform as a cohesive ensemble following a single rhythm. What’s more, the choreographer works collaboratively to plan specific movements that further emphasize the beat. In my opinion, these are brilliant techniques that work every time.
London and colleagues were also keen on the idea that movement helps us find the beat.
In a recent article in the Psychonomic Society’s journal Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, Justin London with colleagues Marc Thompson, Birgitta Burger, Molly Hildreth, and Petri Toiviainen therefore reported an attempt to remedy the tempo-anchoring problem. London and colleagues conducted an experiment that allowed participants to tap along to the beat. In this study, they presented participants with the same Motown stimuli that they used in 2016, only this time they instructed participants to tap along or not tap along with the music.
London and colleagues hypothesized that overt movement would make the beat of the stimulus more salient and therefore make judgments of tempo more accurate. The researchers tested this in 21 participants of varying musical backgrounds. Overall, the participants had no problem tapping in time to the beat of the original and time-stretched versions of the songs. However, much to the authors’ surprise, there was still a discrepancy when making judgments about tempo.
London and colleagues found the same TAE that occurred in their previous study, and bodily movement did not change this effect. Again, participants perceived sped-up songs to be faster than they really were. This was measured using a 7-point rating scale, where 1 = slow and 7 = fast. Participants focused on the speed of each song excerpt and gave it a rating after each trial. The graph below shows that sped-up songs were rated as being faster than other excerpts that actually had a faster BPM, and this was consistent regardless of being able to tap along with the music or not.
These findings show dissociation between rhythmic perception and action. That is, even though the action of tapping along to the beat is accurate, the perception of musical speed is still skewed. This is likely attributed to our memory for music. We know that repetition in music is the secret to a good earworm because it reinforces our memory for the timing and dynamic patterns in the song. When we hear that song at a different speed, those subtle nuances change, and we perceive the difference as greater than it actually is. This study shows that overt movement does not improve our perceptual acuity in this scenario.
The TAE reported in this study has a strong impact on music perception, but maybe one day we’ll be able to make like Michael Jackson, and beat it.
Psychonomic Society article featured in this post:
London, J., Thompson, M., Burger, B., Hildreth, M., & Toiviainen, P. (2019). Tapping doesn’t help: Synchronized self-motion and judgments of musical tempo. Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 81, 2461-2472. DOI: 10.3758/s13414-019-01722-7.
