Segmentation of dance movement: effects of expertise, visual familiarity, motor experience and music

Abstract

According to event segmentation theory, action perception depends on sensory cues and prior knowledge, and the segmentation of observed actions is crucial for understanding and memorizing these actions. While most activities in everyday life are characterized by external goals and interaction with objects or persons, this does not necessarily apply to dance-like actions. We investigated to what extent visual familiarity of the observed movement and accompanying music influence the segmentation of a dance phrase in dancers of different skill level and non-dancers. In Experiment 1, dancers and non-dancers repeatedly watched a video clip showing a dancer performing a choreographed dance phrase and indicated segment boundaries by key press. Dancers generally defined less segment boundaries than non-dancers, specifically in the first trials in which visual familiarity with the phrase was low. Music increased the number of segment boundaries in the non-dancers and decreased it in the dancers. The results suggest that dance expertise reduces the number of perceived segment boundaries in an observed dance phrase, and that the ways visual familiarity and music affect movement segmentation are modulated by dance expertise. In a second experiment, motor experience was added as factor, based on empirical evidence suggesting that action perception is modified by visual and motor expertise in different ways. In Experiment 2, the same task as in Experiment 1 was performed by dance amateurs, and was repeated by the same participants after they had learned to dance the presented dance phrase. Less segment boundaries were defined in the middle trials after participants had learned to dance the phrase, and music reduced the number of segment boundaries before learning. The results suggest that specific motor experience of the observed movement influences its perception and anticipation and makes segmentation broader, but not to the same degree as dance expertise on a professional level.

Effects of cues to event segmentation on subsequent memory

“…In the video of an actor preparing breakfast, our participants likely had a range of expectations about what would occur when an egg was cracked and placed into a frying pan. Expert dancers use their prior knowledge to parse ongoing dance movements differently to novice observers (Bläsing, 2015). Viewers also incorporate features such as goal-directed changes in behavior such as the shift in intentions when footballers switch from offensive schemes to defensive postures (Huff, Papenmeier, & Zacks, 2012).…”

Spectators’ aesthetic experience of sound and movement in dance performance: A transdisciplinary investigation.

“…Our approach parallels the recent proposals of how aesthetic aspects of dance can (Christensen & CalvoMerino, 2013) and should (Jola & Christensen, 2015) be a subject for empirical research into the audience experience. Further, our research emphasis aligns with the current surge of interest in multisensory aspects of performance (Banes & Lepecki, 2007;Bläsing, 2015; Chapple & Kattenbelt, 2006;Di Benedetto, 2010;McKinney, 2012;Vass-Rhee 2010;Viaud-Delmon et al 2012). Within this context of developing research into the multi-modal aspects of dance, our aim was to research audiences' responses to dance movement when accompanied by different combinations of movement and sound.…”

Finding events in a continuous world: A developmental account

“…These findings suggest that movement information has less influence on adults’ segmentation boundary judgments for events involving goal structures than events lacking those higher‐level structures. Further, for a skilled motion event such as figure skating, experts’ segmentations are more sensitive to the goal structure of the event than novices’ segmentations (Levine et al, ; see also Bläsing, ). That is, having more top‐down information about actors’ goals alters adults’ interpretation of low‐level perceptual cues.…”