Spatio-Temporal Cues for Visually Mediated Synchronization

THE ACCURACY WITH WHICH INDIVIDUALS ARE ABLE to synchronize with each other using vision alone is well documented. Less attention, however, has been given to the spatio-temporal characteristics of human movement that offer cues for such synchronization. The present study investigated such cues in the context of conductor-musician synchronization. Twenty-four participants tapped in time with dynamic point-light representations of traditional conducting gestures, in which the clarity of the beat and overall tempo was manipulated. A series of nine linear regression analyses identified absolute acceleration along the trajectory as the main cue for synchronization, while beat clarity and tempo influenced the weights of the variables in the emergent models.