ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Cognition
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1631625
How We Remember Music Tempo: The Role of Spontaneous Motor Tempo in Recall and Preference
Provisionally accepted
- Toyohashi University of Technology, Toyohashi, Japan
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Musical experiences-specifically in terms of how we prefer or remember them-differ among listeners, even when we listen to the same piece of music. Recent studies have suggested that spontaneous motor tempo (SMT), which refers to the pace of repeated body movements, predicts preferred music tempo. However, the question of whether SMT is related to recalled music tempo remains unanswered. We investigated whether SMT is related to recalled music tempo. The participants in this research performed three tasks-recall (no interval), recall (8-second interval), and preference-in which they adjusted music tempos under different conditions. SMT was assessed on the basis of a finger tapping task. Linear mixed models revealed that while the original music tempo predicted adjustments across tasks, SMT significantly predicted the adjusted tempo in the recall (8-second interval) and preference tasks but not in the recall task (no interval). These results suggest that the rehearsal of music tempo may be influenced by SMT.
Keywords: Recollection, spontaneous motor tempo, Music, tempo, Tapping
Received: 20 May 2025; Accepted: 15 Sep 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 HINE, Wakana and Nakauchi. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Kyoko HINE, hine@cs.tut.ac.jp
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