Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

When we listen to music, we can mentally control how we perceive the beat. This ability is thought to be subserved bysensorimotor imagery, having top-down effects on attentional-allocation and perception. Here, we examine whether imagined“up and down” gestures can support an internal generation of metrical accent in rhythmic sequences. We also examine howthis type of motor imagery interacts with either metrically congruent or incongruent auditory imagery. This is explored usingEEG with a frequency-tagging approach, quantifying the strength of metrical accent with the amplitude of beat-related SSEPs.Gesture supports our ability to think and learn by fostering an alignment between sensorimotor representations and moreabstract conceptual structure. Therefore, the imagined gestures may act as a bridge between perceptual and action-orientedunderstandings of metrical structure and the more abstract conceptual ones that musicians struggle with in their training. Theseimagery strategies may then be beneficial to music education.