Threshold-scaled vibrotactile noise effects on finger-movement perception, piano keystroke control, and motor learning in pianists and nonmusicians

This dataset contains de-identified behavioral data from a study examining whether threshold-scaled vibrotactile noise applied to the dorsal surface of the right ring finger alters passive finger-movement discrimination, precision control of piano-key depth, or short-term motor learning, and whether its effects depend on piano expertise. Vibrotactile noise was delivered at 0, 0.6, or 1.5 times each participant’s perceptual threshold. Experiment 1 included 21 pianists and 21 nonmusicians who performed a passive ring-finger movement-discrimination task under the three stimulation conditions. Experiment 2 included 17 pianists and 16 nonmusicians who performed a piano-key-depth control task under the same conditions. Experiment 3 included 30 pianists assigned to training under one of the three conditions (n = 10 per condition), with assessments before and after training. The deposit contains the minimum analysis-ready data needed to reproduce and extend the reported findings. The CSV files provide trial-level data for Experiment 1; participant-condition and keystroke-level data for Experiment 2; and participant-session, keystroke-level, and training-trial data for Experiment 3. A machine-readable data dictionary defines the released variables, units, and permitted values. Participant identifiers are pseudonymous. Identifiers beginning with E12 preserve the subset relationship between Experiments 1 and 2. Experiment 3 uses a separate E3 identifier namespace and does not encode cross-experiment linkage. The deposit does not contain the pseudonymization key, direct identifiers, demographic variables, individual perceptual thresholds, sensation ratings, raw acquisition signals, or unused intermediate files. The accompanying R and Stan files implement the hierarchical Bayesian psychometric analysis for Experiment 1; the primary outcome models for Experiments 2 and 3; binomial sensitivity analyses of hit rate; and exploratory baseline-performance moderation analyses. The primary outcomes include discrimination sensitivity, model-standardized predicted accuracy, hit rate, target-area error, absolute target-center error, coefficient of variation, and training trajectories. Fixed random seeds and sampling settings are specified in the analysis scripts. The reference analyses were conducted using R 4.6.1, CmdStan 2.39.0, cmdstanr 0.9.0, posterior 1.7.1, ggplot2 4.0.3, readr 2.2.0, and dplyr 1.2.1. After extracting the archive, dependencies can be installed with Rscript scripts/install_dependencies.R, and all statistical analyses can be run with Rscript scripts/run_statistics.R. A complete Bayesian run may take several hours.