Temporal expectancy in music perception: Generalising dynamic attending theory through timbre and loudness tasks

Dynamic Attending Theory (DAT) dictates that temporal expectancies are formed when attention becomes entrained to a rhythm of events, which influences performance on stimulus-based tasks. Attention, and subsequently performance, peaks when stimulus onset occurs at an expected point of time, and declines at more unexpected points of stimulus onset, creating a temporal expectancy profile (TEP). Evidence for TEPs exist in time-judgement tasks, but are limited in non-temporally based tasks. If findings of TEPs extended to non-temporal tasks, it acts as evidence for general attention to stimuli to be an overall dynamic process. The present study examined whether TEPs existed in standard-comparison tasks with judgements on the timbre (N=54) and loudness (N=24) of sounds. Results suggested no overall effect of temporal expectancy in timbre or loudness judgements. Findings adhere with previous research (Bauer et al., 2015) and suggest the standard-comparison task is not suitable for demonstrating temporal expectancy effects. Future research is encouraged to investigate temporal expectancy using different types of tasks, and to use caution with interference and interconnectedness between auditory dimensions