Abstract
Anticipatory movements were evaluated in finger tapping trials. Subjects were asked to time their voluntary movement after they listening to a sound (buzzer) at regular intervals (T: 0.8, 1.1, 1.3, 1.9 s). In the trials, they were only listening (A), or tapping a button to match the sound (B). The time between the onset of the last sound and that of the last tap was defined as a anticipation time (t). The time difference between t and T was defined as an error (Δt). As a result, the anticipation error correlated to T in 15 subjects. In 9 subjects, the anticipation time decreased to less than 90% of T (1.9 s) with statistical significance. The coefficient of variation of the anticipation times were significantly smaller in trial B than those in trial A. These results suggest that psychological chronoperception is regulated with the periodicity in physiological movements.
