In group experiments with auditory feedback, synchrony remained enhanced even at 70–100% adaptivity without feedback, synchrony at these high adaptivity levels returned to near baseline. In all experiments, tapper synchronization with the metronome was significantly enhanced with 25–50% adaptivity, compared to no adaptation. Across five experiments-two single-tapper, and three group (four tapper) experiments, we analyzed the effects of metronome adaptivity (percent correction based on the immediately preceding tap-metronome asynchrony) and auditory feedback on tapping performance and subjective ratings. The adaptive metronome is implemented on Arduino Uno circuit boards, allowing for negligible temporal latency between tapper input and adaptive sonic output. Here, we introduce an assistive device-a multi-person adaptive metronome-to facilitate synchronization abilities. However, the degree to which individuals can synchronize with each other depends on their ability to perceive the timing of others’ actions and produce movements accordingly. Synchronization of movement enhances cooperation and trust between people. The results suggest that participants maintained a fixed gain of phase correction as long as the computer was cooperative, but changed their error correction strategies adaptively when faced with an uncooperative computer. Computer simulations were conducted to infer the human participants' error correction parameters from statistical properties of their behavior (means, standard deviations, auto- and cross-correlations).

Musically trained participants were able to maintain synchrony in all these situations, but their behavior varied systematically as a function of the computer's parameter settings. In five experiments the computer's error correction parameters were varied over a wide range, including 'uncooperative' settings that a human synchronization partner could not (or would not normally) adopt.

In the present research, the computer was programmed to carry out phase and/or period correction in response to asynchronies between taps and tones, and thereby to modulate adaptively the timing of the auditory sequence that human participants were synchronizing with, as a human partner might do. Most studies of human sensorimotor synchronization require participants to coordinate actions with computer-controlled event sequences that are unresponsive to their behavior.

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