Synchronicities that shape the perception of joint action

Abstract

In joint performances spanning from jazz improvisation to soccer, expert performers synchronize their movements in ways that novices cannot. Particularly, experts can align the velocity profiles of their movements in order to achieve synchrony on a fine-grained time scale, compared to novices who can only synchronize the duration of their movement intervals. This study investigated how experts’ ability to engage in velocity-based synchrony affects observers’ perception of coordination and their aesthetic experience of joint performances. Participants observed two moving dots on a screen and were told that these reflect the hand movements of two performers engaging in joint improvisation. The dots were animated to reflect the velocity-based synchrony characteristic of expert performance (in terms of jitter of the velocity profile: Experiment 1, or through aligning sharpness of the velocity profile: Experiment 2) or contained only interval-based synchrony. Performances containing velocity-based synchrony were judged as more coordinated with performers rated as liking each other more, and were rated as more beautiful, providing observers with a stronger aesthetic experience. These findings demonstrate that subtle timing cues fundamentally shape the experience of watching joint actions, directly influencing how beautiful and enjoyable we find these interactions, as well as our perception of the relationship between co-actors.

Multilevel rhythms in multimodal communication

“…For example, synchronized drumming in groups synchronizes physiology, aligning participants' heartbeats [74]. Further, visual observation of interpersonal synchronous movement between others may lead observers to rate higher levels of rapport (liking) between the interacting individuals [75] and increase an audience's affective and aesthetic enjoyment of a group dance performance [76].…”

“…R. Soc. B 376: 20200334 to rate higher levels of rapport (liking) between the interacting individuals [75] and increase an audience's affective and aesthetic enjoyment of a group dance performance [76].…”

Intentional synchronisation affects automatic imitation and source memory

“…Sliders were 8 cm (diameter) and 4 cm (height) positioned 20 cm apart and each slider moved along a 60 × 1 cm track. We recorded movement data using a Polhemus G4 motion tracker and attaching sensors on top of the sliders (sampling rate of 120 Hz, using custom tool kit on Matlab 46 . We created coordination scores for each trial separately by taking the squared difference between each slider's position (in cm) every 100 ms, after excluding the first 20 s of each trial in order to exclude the part of the task where the metronomes had paced participants.…”

Perception and Action in a Social Context

“…Further, perception of synchrony can also influence others' evaluations of joint performances. Participants in McEllin et al (2020) watched videos of two moving dots, which they believed to be motion captures from the hands of two performers. In addition to perceiving the depicted actors as liking each other more, participants reported synchronous performances as more beautiful and enjoyable.…”