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.

Figure 1

Graph showing the interaction between Asynchrony and Jitter for ratings of Coordination (a: left panel), Liking (b: middle panel) and Aesthetics (c: right panel). Error bars represent within-subjects confidence intervals, and individual data points represent group-mean centred ratings for each participant.

Figure 2

Graph showing the interaction between Asynchrony and Kurtosis Difference for ratings of Coordination (a: left panel), Liking (b: middle panel) and Aesthetics (c: right panel). Error bars represent within-subjects confidence intervals, and individual data points represent group-mean centred ratings for each participant.

Figure 3

Apparatus used to record the movement data for our stimuli.

Figure 4

Example of the velocity profiles for two strokes, for each of our types of interaction. Velocity profiles in which interval-based synchrony (top graphs: low asynchrony, bottom graphs: high asynchrony) and velocity-based synchrony (left: no jitter/kurtosis, middle: high jitter, right: high kurtosis difference).