Predictable Timing Enhances the Use of Predictable Content

Predictable timing improves listeners’ use of predictable pitch-content structure in 1/f^beta tone sequences, with response error decreasing and reliance on preceding tones increasing.

• Why it matters: Timing and content structure are often studied separately, leaving open whether the brain integrates them for prediction or processes them independently.
• What they did: Listeners heard tone sequences whose pitch trajectories followed 1/f^beta structure while temporal periodicity was independently varied; response errors were measured against Gaussian Process Regression outcome predictions and a model-free influence-from-previous-tones metric.
• The result: Response error decreased and reliance on preceding tones increased with higher beta and periodic timing, with an interaction where periodicity’s effect on preceding-tone influence grew as beta increased, while response error’s interaction was absent and periodic timing effects were reliable only for the most structured sequences.