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Concurrently tracking two rhythms with eye and finger movements

Poster Session A - Saturday, March 7, 2026, 3:00 – 5:00 pm PST, Fairview/Kitsilano Ballrooms

Abigail Liu¹ (abliu@u.northwestern.edu), Kezhen Qi¹, Khayla Santiago¹, Marcia Grabowecky¹, Satoru Suzuki¹; ¹Northwestern University

Eye-hand coordination is essential in everyday life. This suggests that the motor systems controlling ocular and manual movements may be strongly coupled. To evaluate this possibility, we investigated whether concurrent engagement of eye and finger movements was facilitated when tracking the same rhythm and disrupted (due to interference) when tracking separate (incongruent) rhythms. Participants performed a continuous visual tracking task in which they fixated on a target which appeared at a constant temporal interval at either predictable or random locations, eliciting predictive or reactive saccades. At the same time, participants synchronized their finger tapping to an auditory metronome which was either synchronized to the rhythm of the visual target or desynchronized (25% faster or slower than the visual rhythm). Participants robustly synchronized their finger tapping to the auditory metronome, maintaining their tapping rhythm regardless of its congruency with the visual rhythm. Participants also robustly synchronized their saccades to the visual rhythm. They initiated (predictive) saccades to predictable target locations at or before target onsets and initiated (reactive) saccades to random target locations with a relatively constant delay. Importantly, the timing of both predictive and reactive saccades was little affected by the concurrent rhythmic tapping regardless of its congruency with the visual rhythm. These results demonstrate that people can concurrently track two incongruent rhythms in parallel, tracking a visual rhythm with eye movements and a different auditory rhythm with finger tapping, with surprisingly little cost. This suggests the existence of partially independent timing mechanisms controlling saccades and finger tapping.

Topic Area: PERCEPTION & ACTION: Motor control