Feel the beat: the impact of rhythms on dynamic visual search

Abstract Rhythms are everywhere – we encounter them in our environment and produce them through movement, speech, and sensory activity. In both cognitive and clinical settings, externally imposed rhythms can improve performance by providing temporal regularities that guide attention and behavior. In this study, we aimed to understand the impact of external and internal rhythms on visual performance in a cross-modal task devoid of rhythmic temporal structure. We thus investigated the differential impact of auditory beats (1-, 2-, 5-Hz, or no beat) on visual detection in a non-rhythmic, dynamic search task requiring the continuous deployment of attention. We additionally assessed whether the influence of auditory beats on detection was modulated by individuals’ rhythmic preferences as measured by their spontaneous motor tempo. Overall, we found that auditory rhythms enhanced visual task performance, even in the absence of rhythmic structure within the measured task, improving both detection accuracy and response speed. This enhancement was tempo-dependent, with the strongest facilitation observed at 2 Hz. The magnitude of the observed benefits varied with individuals’ spontaneous motor tempo, such that participants with slower SMTs exhibited the greatest performance benefits due to the presence of auditory rhythms. We propose that rhythmic stimulation may serve as a powerful scaffold for sustained performance in the context of dynamic and temporally unpredictable environments.