Pitch biases sensorimotor synchronization to auditory rhythms

Current models of rhythm perception propose that humans track musical beats using the phase, period, and amplitude of sound patterns. However, a growing body of evidence suggests that pitch can also influence the perceived timing of auditory signals. In the present study, we conducted two experiments to investigate whether pitch also affects the tempo and asynchrony of sensorimotor synchronization. To do so, we asked participants to synchronize with a repeating tone, whose pitch on each trial was drawn from one of six different octaves (110–3520 Hz). In Experiment 1, we observed U-shaped patterns in both mean asynchrony and continuation tapping rates, with participants tapping latest and slowest when synchronizing to low and extremely high (above 2000 Hz) pitches, and tapping earliest and fastest to moderately high pitches. In Experiment 2, we found that extremely high pitches still produced slower timing than moderately high pitches when participants were exposed to an exclusively high-pitched context. We advocate for the incorporation of pitch into models of rhythm perception, and we discuss the possibility that there may exist two pitch-based influences on perceived tempo: a learned correlation between higher pitches and faster timing, and a U-shaped effect of stimulus frequency on neural dynamics.