Tempo Perception Across Cultures: The Beat is All It Takes

Abstract

Dancing to music is a human universal that relies on beat perception. Listeners may infer the “tempo” or speed of music from: the time interval between beats; the density of events; higher-level features of musical temporal organization (the meter). The “Gabbling Foreigner Illusion” is the observation that listeners perceive unfamiliar languages as being faster than familiar ones. Even when music is the same speed, listeners tap faster to unfamiliar music. Does culture background impact how we perceive musical tempo

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