Speed and Direction as two Overlapping Rhythms: Accuracy and Precision in Interpretation and Performance

Human and animal locomotion establishes a tight connection between movement in space and rhythm. Previous studies have explored the connection between rhythmic regularity and locomotor speed. In human-computer interaction, it has been shown that it is possible to control the trajectories of objects in two-dimensional space by producing rhythmic cells. The two studies here reported have the dual aim to investigate how well humans can (i) interpret overlapping rhythms as indications of direction and speed of a dragged moving object, and (ii) perform overlapping rhythms as corresponding to the speed and direction of a visual object. We assessed the accuracy and precision of these rhythmic trajectories using multisensory translation tasks.