Individual differences in athletes' perception of expressive body movements

Abstract

Objectives: Understanding others' actions depends on the observer's individual characteristics and sensorimotor experience. Motor performance domains, such as sports and the performing arts, provide optimal situations to investigate the determinants of action perception. We investigated athletes' perceptual identification of expression intensity in body movements. Design: A within-subjects design was used. Method: Participants watched point-light displays (1,000 ms long) depicting expressive and inexpressive dance movements. The task was to identify the dancer's intended expression intensity. Results: The results indicate that expressive body movements can be reliably identified, with judgement accuracy correlating with self-report empathy indices, intuitive/deliberate decision-making preferences, and indices of sports training. Only years of sports training could predict perceptual identification accuracy. Conclusions: We discuss the findings in relation to motor and cognitive-emotional contributions to action simulation. The potential of cross-domain transfer of motor expertise for boosting perceptual judgements and a hierarchical role of factors eliciting action simulation are also outlined.

Informing, Coordinating, and Performing: A Perspective on Functions of Sensorimotor Communication

“…A further example of individual characteristics that may influence sensorimotor communication is trait-like individual differences, for example, related to empathy. Individuals scoring higher on empathy in self-report questionnaires were found to be more accurate in estimating performers' intentions for expression, whether they were observing ensemble musicians (Wöllner, 2012b) or dancers (Sevdalis and Keller, 2012;Sevdalis and Raab, 2014;Sevdalis and Raab, 2016).…”

Aesthetic evaluation of body movements shaped by embodiment and arts experience: Insights from behaviour and fNIRS

“…Emerging evidence from our research group suggests that individual differences in the attention that one pays to one's bodily functions and the confidence that one has in one's body are correlated with ratings of reproducibility when observing snippets of a mirror game 39 . A possible link between sports enjoyment or experience and body confidence and action intention should be considered in future work 22,45 . As for the relationship between enjoyment of music and ratings of reproducibility, we suggest that perhaps participants who enjoy music more are better attuned to beats and rhythms, even when no music or auditory beat is present 46 .…”

Діагностика Рівня Емпатії У Тренерів З Черліденгу

“…Способи, за допомогою яких тренери можуть удосконалити та розвинути свою емпатійну точність, досліджуються в чотирьох напрямах: збирання інформації, уникнення упереджень, підтримання належного рівня емпатії та рефлексії [12]. Доведено, що існують зв'язки між емпатією та прийняттям рішень під час спостереження та/або виконання дій [19].…”