Coordination of perception and action in music performance

When performing musical sequences, people plan actions to produce acoustic events that communicate thoughts and emotions (for reviews see Gabrielsson, 1999; 2003; Jones & Holleran, 1992; Juslin & Sloboda, 2001; Palmer, 1997; Sloboda, 1982; 1985; 2005). Sequence production in contexts such as music and speech involves communicating a message through sound, a process that is probably guided by monitoring the perceived consequences of one’s actions (Levelt, 1989; MacKay, 1987; Palmer & Drake, 1997). However, little research has addressed the role of self-perception in music performance. My research has explored this issue by examining the ways in which the maintenance of fluency during music performance depends on matches between actions and auditory feedback (the sounds one creates). Results suggest that higher-order representations of musical structure guide both the planning of actions and the perception of auditory feedback (cf. Hommel, Müsseler, Aschersleben, & Prinz, 2001; MacKay, 1987; Müsseler, 1999; Prinz, 1997). The lack of research on the role of auditory feedback may result from its apparently obvious importance to music performance. How else could music be learned or communicated but through close monitoring of sound? Nevertheless, some evidence indicates that the importance of auditory feedback may be circumscribed. On the one hand, the presence of sound during learning facilitates recall during performance, even for skilled pianists (Finney & Palmer, 2003). On the other hand, learning to produce a sequence of key presses on a piano does not depend on the presence of sound, even for people without any musical training (Pfordresher, 2005, Experiment 3). Furthermore, the absence of sound during keyboard performance of a learned melody has negligible effects on trained performers (Finney, 1997; Finney & Palmer, 2003; Gates & Bradshaw, 1974; Pfordresher, 2005; Repp, 1999; Repp & Knoblich, 2004) or untrained performers (Pfordresher, 2005). In contrast to null effects of feedback absence, certain alterations of auditory feedback can profoundly debilitate performance, to the extent that a skilled performer sounds like a beginner. Thus, pianists may ABSTRACT