A1 Journal article (refereed)
Postural and Gestural Synchronization, Sequential Imitation, and Mirroring Predict Perceived Coupling of Dancing Dyads (2023)

Hartmann, M., Carlson, E., Mavrolampados, A., Burger, B., & Toiviainen, P. (2023). Postural and Gestural Synchronization, Sequential Imitation, and Mirroring Predict Perceived Coupling of Dancing Dyads. Cognitive Science, 47(4), Article e13281. https://doi.org/10.1111/cogs.13281

JYU authors or editors

Publication details

All authors or editors: Hartmann, Martin; Carlson, Emily; Mavrolampados, Anastasios; Burger, Birgitta; Toiviainen, Petri

Journal or series: Cognitive Science

ISSN: 0364-0213

eISSN: 1551-6709

Publication year: 2023

Volume: 47

Issue number: 4

Article number: e13281

Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell

Publication country: United States

Publication language: English

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/cogs.13281

Publication open access: Openly available

Publication channel open access: Partially open access channel

Publication is parallel published (JYX): https://jyx.jyu.fi/handle/123456789/87191

Abstract

Body movement is a primary nonverbal communication channel in humans. Coordinated social behaviors, such as dancing together, encourage multifarious rhythmic and interpersonally coupled movements from which observers can extract socially and contextually relevant information. The investigation of relations between visual social perception and kinematic motor coupling is important for social cognition. Perceived coupling of dyads spontaneously dancing to pop music has been shown to be highly driven by the degree of frontal orientation between dancers. The perceptual salience of other aspects, including postural congruence, movement frequencies, time-delayed relations, and horizontal mirroring remains, however, uncertain. In a motion capture study, 90 participant dyads moved freely to 16 musical excerpts from eight musical genres, while their movements were recorded using optical motion capture. A total from 128 recordings from 8 dyads maximally facing each other were selected to generate silent 8-s animations. Three kinematic features describing simultaneous and sequential full body coupling were extracted from the dyads. In an online experiment, the animations were presented to 432 observers, who were asked to rate perceived similarity and interaction between dancers. We found dyadic kinematic coupling estimates to be higher than those obtained from surrogate estimates, providing evidence for a social dimension of entrainment in dance. Further, we observed links between perceived similarity and coupling of both slower simultaneous horizontal gestures and posture bounding volumes. Perceived interaction, on the other hand, was more related to coupling of faster simultaneous gestures and to sequential coupling. Also, dyads who were perceived as more coupled tended to mirror their pair's movements.

Keywords: dance (performing arts); dancers; motion; positions (physical properties); mirroring; social interaction; interaction

Free keywords: full-body coupling; entrainment; convex envelope; time-frequency analysis; time-delayanalysis; mirroring

Contributing organizations

Related projects

Ministry reporting: Yes

VIRTA submission year: 2023

JUFO rating: 2