Timing processes are correlated when tasks share a salient event.

Event timing is manifested when participants make discrete movements such as repeatedly tapping a key. Emergent timing is manifested when participants make continuous movements such as repeatedly drawing a circle. Here we pursued the possibility that providing salient perceptual events to mark the completion of time intervals could allow circle drawing and tapping to share a common timing process. Individual differences in timing performance were correlated in the tapping and circle drawing tasks when a salient auditory event marked the completion of a cycle. The results suggest that the distinction between event timing and emergent timing does not inhere solely in kinematics but inheres as well in the way task goals are represented.