After several times of such repetitions, participants’ internal interpretations of the music became dominant. It turned out that most of the rhythms produced by US listeners had time intervals associated with simple integers: 1:1:2 and 2:3:3, the most common in music from Western cultures. Participants from Bolivia also reproduced simple integer ratios, but these were different from the rhythms of Western music and probably corresponded to the melodies to which they were accustomed.
Similarly, as in their original study, the researchers found that in every group they tested, people in each group tended to perceive simple whole number ratios of musical rhythm. But the same ratios were not observed in all of them. Thus, participants from North America and Western Europe showed a propensity for some rhythms, while volunteers from Turkey, Mali, Bulgaria, and Botswana showed a propensity for others (2:2:3). For example, the rhythm divided by equal or almost equal time intervals (1:1:1 or 1:1:2) was universal for all cultures.
