A Motion Capture Study to Measure the Feeling of Synchrony in Romantic Couples and in Professional Musicians
Type
ArticleAuthors
Preissmann, DelphineCharbonnier, Caecilia
Chagué, Sylvain
Antonietti, Jean Philippe
Llobera, Joan
Ansermet, Francois
Magistretti, Pierre J.

KAUST Department
Biological and Environmental Sciences and Engineering (BESE) DivisionBioscience Program
Date
2016-10-27Permanent link to this record
http://hdl.handle.net/10754/621946
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Show full item recordAbstract
The feeling of synchrony is fundamental for most social activities and prosocial behaviors. However, little is known about the behavioral correlates of this feeling and its modulation by intergroup differences. We previously showed that the subjective feeling of synchrony in subjects involved in a mirror imitation task was modulated by objective behavioral measures, as well as contextual factors such as task difficulty and duration of the task performance. In the present study, we extended our methodology to investigate possible interindividual differences. We hypothesized that being in a romantic relationship or being a professional musician can modulate both implicit and explicit synchronization and the feeling of synchrony as well as the ability to detect synchrony from a third person perspective. Contrary to our hypothesis, we did not find significant differences between people in a romantic relationship and control subjects. However, we observed differences between musicians and control subjects. For the implicit synchrony (spontaneous synchronization during walking), the results revealed that musicians that had never met before spontaneously synchronized their movements earlier among themselves than control subjects, but not better than people sharing a romantic relationship. Moreover, in explicit behavioral synchronization tasks (mirror game), musicians reported earlier feeling of synchrony and had less speed errors than control subjects. This was in interaction with tasks difficulty as these differences appeared only in tasks with intermediate difficulty. Finally, when subjects had to judge synchrony from a third person perspective, musicians had a better performance to identify if they were present or not in the videos. Taken together, our results suggest that being a professional musician can play a role in the feeling of synchrony and its underlying mechanisms. © 2016 Preissmann, Charbonnier, Chagué, Antonietti, Llobera, Ansermet and Magistretti.Citation
Preissmann D, Charbonnier C, Chagué S, Antonietti J-P, Llobera J, et al. (2016) A Motion Capture Study to Measure the Feeling of Synchrony in Romantic Couples and in Professional Musicians. Frontiers in Psychology 7. Available: http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01673.Sponsors
This research project has been entirely funded by the Agalma Foundation. The funder had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.Publisher
Frontiers Media SAJournal
Frontiers in PsychologyAdditional Links
http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01673/fullae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01673
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