Visual tuning and metrical perception of realistic point-light dance movements.

Yi-Huang Su

doi:10.1038/srep22774

Abstract

Humans move to music spontaneously, and this sensorimotor coupling underlies musical rhythm perception. The present research proposed that, based on common action representation, different metrical levels as in auditory rhythms could emerge visually when observing structured dance movements. Participants watched a point-light figure performing basic steps of Swing dance cyclically in different tempi, whereby the trunk bounced vertically at every beat and the limbs moved laterally at every second beat, yielding two possible metrical periodicities. In Experiment 1, participants freely identified a tempo of the movement and tapped along. While some observers only tuned to the bounce and some only to the limbs, the majority tuned to one level or the other depending on the movement tempo, which was also associated with individuals’ preferred tempo. In Experiment 2, participants reproduced the tempo of leg movements by four regular taps, and showed a slower perceived leg tempo with than without the trunk bouncing simultaneously in the stimuli. This mirrors previous findings of an auditory ‘subdivision effect’, suggesting the leg movements were perceived as beat while the bounce as subdivisions. Together these results support visual metrical perception of dance movements, which may employ similar action-based mechanisms to those underpinning auditory rhythm perception.

Highlights

Perception and synchronization with a periodically moving object, such as a bouncing ball[31,32], and that humans can visually entrain to a simple periodicity of another individual’s movement, such as finger-tapping trajectory, leg oscillation, or body sway
Given previous findings that vertical trunk movements tend to be synchronized to a regular pulse[6,35], while lateral movement patterns of the limbs can correspond to higher metrical grouping[6,34], two kinds of dance movements encompassing these components were selected as visual stimuli for the present study: Charleston, and Balboa (Fig. 1)
For those who only tuned to the limb movement, the individual percentages of tuning were submitted to a 2 (Dance style) × 2 (TM) × 6 (Tempo) repeated-measures ANOVA

Summary

Introduction

Perception and synchronization with a periodically moving object, such as a bouncing ball[31,32], and that humans can visually entrain to a simple periodicity of another individual’s movement, such as finger-tapping trajectory, leg oscillation, or body sway (see section 3.2 of[28]). Given previous findings that vertical trunk movements tend to be synchronized to a regular pulse[6,35], while lateral movement patterns of the limbs can correspond to higher metrical grouping[6,34], two kinds of dance movements encompassing these components were selected as visual stimuli for the present study: Charleston, and Balboa (Fig. 1). Both dances belong to the class swing dance, typically accompanied by swing music of a 4/4 musical meter[36]. The choice of tuning may be related to each individual’s preferred tempo

Methods

Results

Conclusion