Parallelism

Abstract

The ability to “keep time” refers to the momentary tracking of a dynamic environmental event; sometimes our natural tendencies for “keeping” time are apparent, while the underlying synchronies of attending may be less obvious. This chapter has three goals. The first is to demonstrate a parallelism between the production of an event (e.g., a spoken phrase or sentence) and one’s expectancy or perception of that event. Expressing such parallels requires specifying underlying factors in production and expectancies, such as the attractors and referent oscillation responsible for producing a tempo curve. The second goal is to propose the respective roles of voluntary and involuntary factors that figure into these expressions. The third goal is to present readers with a sample of studies that embody parallelism.