A novel method for estimating properties of attentional oscillators reveals an age-related decline in flexibility
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Auditory tasks such as understanding speech and listening to music rely on the ability to track sound sequences and adjust attention based on the temporal cues they contain. An entrainment approach proposes that internal oscillatory mechanisms underlie the ability to synchronize with rhythms in the external world. Here, we aimed to understand the factors that facilitate and impede rhythm processing by investigating the interplay between the properties of external and internal rhythms. We focused on two key properties of an oscillator: its preferred rate, the default rate at which it oscillates in the absence of input, and flexibility, its ability to adapt to changes in rhythmic context. We hypothesized that flexibility would be diminished with advancing age. Experiment 1 was a two-session duration discrimination paradigm where we developed methods to estimate preferred rate and flexibility and assessed their reliability. Experiment 2 involved a shorter version of this paradigm and a paced tapping task with matched stimulus conditions, in addition to a spontaneous motor tempo (SMT) and two preferred perceptual tempo (PPT) tasks that measured motor and perceptual rate preferences, respectively. Preferred rates, estimated as the stimulus rates with the best performance, showed a harmonic relationship across sessions (Experiment 1) and were correlated with SMT (Experiment 2). Interestingly, estimates from motor tasks were slower than those from the perceptual task, and the degree of slowing was consistent for each individual. To challenge an individual’s oscillator flexibility, we maximized the differences in stimulus rates between consecutive trials in the duration discrimination and paced tapping tasks. As a result, performance in both tasks decreased, and responses on individual trials indicated a gravitation toward the stimulus rate presented in the preceding trial. Critically, flexibility, quantified as an individual’s ability to adapt to faster-than-previous rates, decreased with age. Overall, these findings show domain-specific rate preferences for the assumed oscillatory system underlying rhythm perception and production, and that this system loses its ability to flexibly adapt to changes in the external rhythmic context during ageing.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.004 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".