Metrical congruency and kinematic familiarity facilitate temporal binding between musical and dance rhythms.

Although music and dance are often experienced simultaneously, it is unclear what modulates their perceptual integration. This study investigated how two factors related to music-dance correspondences influenced audiovisual binding of their rhythms: the metrical match between the music and dance, and the kinematic familiarity of the dance movement. Participants watched a point-light figure dancing synchronously to a triple-meter rhythm that they heard in parallel, whereby the dance communicated a triple (congruent) or a duple (incongruent) visual meter.

Your move or mine? Music training and kinematic compatibility modulate synchronization with self- versus other-generated dance movement.

Motor simulation has been implicated in how musicians anticipate the rhythm of another musician's action to achieve interpersonal synchronization. Here, we investigated whether similar mechanisms govern a related form of rhythmic action: dance. We examined (1) whether synchronization with visual dance stimuli was influenced by movement agency, (2) whether music training modulated simulation efficiency, and (3) what cues were relevant for simulating the dance rhythm.

Visual Enhancement of Illusory Phenomenal Accents in Non-Isochronous Auditory Rhythms.

Musical rhythms encompass temporal patterns that often yield regular metrical accents (e.g., a beat).

Visual Timing of Structured Dance Movements Resembles Auditory Rhythm Perception.

Temporal mechanisms for processing auditory musical rhythms are well established, in which a perceived beat is beneficial for timing purposes. It is yet unknown whether such beat-based timing would also underlie visual perception of temporally structured, ecological stimuli connected to music: dance. In this study, we investigated whether observers extracted a visual beat when watching dance movements to assist visual timing of these movements.

Sensorimotor Synchronization with Different Metrical Levels of Point-Light Dance Movements.

Rhythm perception and synchronization have been extensively investigated in the auditory domain, as they underlie means of human communication such as music and speech. Although recent studies suggest comparable mechanisms for synchronizing with periodically moving visual objects, the extent to which it applies to ecologically relevant information, such as the rhythm of complex biological motion, remains unknown. The present study addressed this issue by linking rhythm of music and dance in the framework of action-perception coupling.

Visual tuning and metrical perception of realistic point-light dance movements.

Humans move to music spontaneously, and this sensorimotor coupling underlies musical rhythm perception. The present research proposed that, based on common action representation, different metrical levels as in auditory rhythms could emerge visually when observing structured dance movements. Participants watched a point-light figure performing basic steps of Swing dance cyclically in different tempi, whereby the trunk bounced vertically at every beat and the limbs moved laterally at every second beat, yielding two possible metrical periodicities.

Content congruency and its interplay with temporal synchrony modulate integration between rhythmic audiovisual streams.

Both lower-level stimulus factors (e.g., temporal proximity) and higher-level cognitive factors (e.

Audiovisual beat induction in complex auditory rhythms: point-light figure movement as an effective visual beat.

This study investigated whether explicit beat induction in the auditory, visual, and audiovisual (bimodal) modalities aided the perception of weakly metrical auditory rhythms, and whether it reinforced attentional entrainment to the beat of these rhythms. The visual beat-inducer was a periodically bouncing point-light figure, which aimed to examine whether an observed rhythmic human movement could induce a beat that would influence auditory rhythm perception. In two tasks, participants listened to three repetitions of an auditory rhythm that were preceded and accompanied by (1) an auditory beat, (2) a bouncing point-light figure, (3) a combination of (1) and (2) synchronously, or (4) a combination of (1) and (2), with the figure moving in anti-phase to the auditory beat.

Visual enhancement of auditory beat perception across auditory interference levels.

This study dealt with audiovisual rhythm perception involving an observed movement. Two experiments investigated whether a visual beat conveyed by a bouncing human point-light figure facilitated beat perception of concurrent auditory rhythms, and whether this enhancement followed a profile of multisensory integration. In Experiment 1, participants listened to three repetitions of a metrically simple rhythm and detected a perturbation in the third repetition.

Peak velocity as a cue in audiovisual synchrony perception of rhythmic stimuli.

This study investigated audiovisual synchrony perception in a rhythmic context, where the sound was not consequent upon the observed movement. Participants judged synchrony between a bouncing point-light figure and an auditory rhythm in two experiments. Two questions were of interest: (1) whether the reference in the visual movement, with which the auditory beat should coincide, relies on a position or a velocity cue; (2) whether the figure form and motion profile affect synchrony perception.

Adjustments of speed and path when avoiding collisions with another pedestrian.

When walking in open space, collision avoidance with other pedestrians is a process that successfully takes place many times. To pass another pedestrian (an interferer) walking direction, walking speed or both can be adjusted. Currently, the literature is not yet conclusive of how humans adjust these two parameters in the presence of an interferer.

A unique visual rhythm does not pop out.

We investigated attentional demands in visual rhythm perception of periodically moving stimuli using a visual search paradigm. A dynamic search display consisted of vertically "bouncing dots" with regular rhythms. The search target was defined by a unique visual rhythm (i.

Sensorimotor synchronization: a review of recent research (2006-2012).

Sensorimotor synchronization (SMS) is the coordination of rhythmic movement with an external rhythm, ranging from finger tapping in time with a metronome to musical ensemble performance. An earlier review (Repp, 2005) covered tapping studies; two additional reviews (Repp, 2006a, b) focused on music performance and on rate limits of SMS, respectively. The present article supplements and extends these earlier reviews by surveying more recent research in what appears to be a burgeoning field.

Hearing the speed: visual motion biases the perception of auditory tempo.

The coupling between sensory and motor processes has been established in various scenarios: for example, the perception of auditory rhythm entails an audiomotor representation of the sounds. Similarly, visual action patterns can also be represented via a visuomotor transformation. In this study, we tested the hypothesis that the visual motor information, such as embedded in a coherent motion flow, can interact with the perception of a motor-related aspect in auditory rhythm: the tempo.

Body movement enhances the extraction of temporal structures in auditory sequences.

Auditory and motor systems interact in processing auditory rhythms. This study investigated the effect of intuitive body movement, such as head nodding or foot tapping, on listeners' ability to entrain to the pulse of an auditory sequence. A pulse-finding task was employed using an isochronous sequence of tones in which tones were omitted at pseudorandom positions.