Empathy, Entrainment, and Perceived Interaction in Complex Dyadic Dance Movement

Abstract

The current study explores how individuals' tendency to empathize with others (trait empathy) modulates interaction and social entrainment in dyadic dance in a free movement context using perceptual and computationally derived measures. Stimuli consisting of 24 point-light animations were created using motion capture data selected from a sample of 99 dyads, based on self-reported trait empathy. Individuals whose Empathy Quotient (EQ) scores were in the top or bottom quartile of all scores were considered to have high or low empathy, respectively, and twelve dyads comprised of four high-high, four low-low, and four high-low empathy combinations were identified. Animations of these dyads were presented to 33 participants, who rated the degree of interaction and movement similarity for each stimulus. Results showed a significant effect of empathy combination on perceived interactivity and perceived similarity. High-low stimuli were rated as significantly more interactive than either high-high or low-low stimuli, while high-high stimuli were rated as significantly less similar than high-low and low-low. Dyads’ period-locking, bodily orientation and amount of hand movement were all significantly correlated with rated amount of interaction, while rated similarity only related significantly to period-locking. Results suggest that period-locking is important for social entrainment to be perceived, but that other signals such as bodily orientation and hand movement also signal social entrainment during free dance movement.

Decoding Individual differences and musical preference via music-induced movement

“…The first dataset is from the study by Carlson et al 31 comprising data from 58 university students (41 females; mean age = 26.8 years, std = 4.7 years). Participant gave written consent and participation was completely voluntary.…”

“…The current study aims to address these many potential influences on an individual’s music-induced movements, by using free dance movement to predict dancers’ gender, personality traits, and music preference. To this end, we use data sets from Carlson et al 31 and Luck et al 24 and employ machine learning techniques to predict Gender, Personality, and musical preferences from music-induced movement. We follow Carlson et al 23 in making use of co-variance between joints as a kinematic feature, as Troje, Westhoff and Lavrov 1 and Westhoff and Troje 2 have suggested that phase relationships between joints may have perceptual validity as a feature used in perceiving human movement.…”

Embodied Songs: Insights Into the Nature of Cross-Modal Meaning-Making Within Sign Language Informed, Embodied Interpretations of Vocal Music

“…Synchronization of rhythm between two entities, particularly with respect to body functions and processes, such as tapping along to music or brainwave frequencies aligning with a periodic stimulus (regular rhythm), is known as entrainment (Korsakova-Kreyn, 2018). Rhythm in sound and observed movement can illicit entrainment in the audience, which can feel good physiologically and socially (feeling in-tune with the crowd at a concert) and can add to the meaning of a song by evoking imagery associated with the pacing or patterning of the rhythmic marking (Carlson et al, 2019;Marshall-Rose, 2019;Singer, 2019).…”

Learning Spanish as a foreign language through Music

“…The important emotional charge of music balances out the possible initial difficulty of understanding the lyrics of the songs and produces a greater acceptance by the audience, who will accept iconic references through emotion (Mithen, 2006). In other words, music does not have to provide concrete referential meanings but it has a deep impact on our emotions and makes us move through the rhythmic drag or entrainment, decisively affecting our idea of belonging to a group (Carlson et al, 2019;Gill, 2012;Trost et al, 2017).…”

“…Music is, as well as being an artistic product, a means of communication which has great influence on human beings' socialisation (Carlson et al, 2019;Cross, 2010). It is not only what is listened to and how, but where, when and with whom.…”