Blind people learn metrical and nonmetrical rhythms differently than the sighted

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When learning rhythms, sighted people tend to learn rhythms better when they induce a sense of beat (i.e., metrical rhythms) compared to when they don’t (i.e., nonmetrical rhythms). This experiment shows that blind people demonstrated the reverse trend; they learned nonmetrical rhythms better than metrical rhythms. These results suggest that the blind might be more sensitive to rhythms that are irregular, perhaps as a survival mechanism to detect changes in the environment that signal danger.