Do the Musicians Play Well in Rhythm Together? A New Beat Alignment Task to Assess Rhythmic Abilities in Children (the popBAT)

Beat processing is a fundamental skill for music and speech processing, as well as motor coordination. Existing tools testing beat perception, such as the seminal Beat Alignment Test (BAT), mostly use beat keepers that are external to the music, and may be too long to be engaging for children. We here developed the popBAT: a novel, child-friendly test using groovy pop-music excerpts, a musically integrated kick drum as the beat keeper, and a cover story, all aiming to enhance ecological validity and children’s engagement. Across four experiments, the popBAT was validated in adults (Exp. 1-2) and 7- to 8-year old children (Exp. 3-4). In adults, the kick drum significantly increased subjective ratings of “pleasure”, “wanting to move”, and “pulse clarity”, compared to a triangle timbre playing the beat. In children and adults, popBAT performance was significantly above chance level, and popBAT performance correlated positively with performance in a previously used BAT implementation (adapted from Dalla Bella et al., 2017), confirming its convergent validity. In Experiment 4, popBAT performance significantly correlated with chronological age and reading performance, further confirming the link between beat perception and reading abilities. The popBAT provides a short, engaging, and ecologically valid measure of beat perception in children. Its success in 7- and 8-year-old children supports its use for investigating the developmental trajectories of rhythm processing and its role in language abilities, offering a promising tool for both research and clinical settings.