The Role of Repetition in Groove Experience

Groove is commonly defined as the pleasurable urge to move in response to music, yet its temporal dynamics remain insufficiently understood. This study investigated how groove evolves with repeated exposure to rhythmic patterns of different lengths. A total of 2,295 participants each evaluated one of 32 drum break stimuli varying in cycle length (2, 4, or 8 beats) and number of repetitions. Groove increased in a saturating manner with rhythmic repetition, particularly for shorter patterns, whereas longer patterns elicited higher initial groove but smaller increases across repetitions. To account for these dynamics, we proposed a nonlinear model combining a saturating growth component and a damped oscillatory term. Within a predictive coding framework, the model fit the data well and generalized across validation procedures. These findings suggest that groove is not determined solely by stimulus duration but emerges through iterative stabilization of predictive processes, reflecting both gradual increases in predictive precision and transient fluctuations in prediction error.