Audience entrainment during live contemporary dance performance: physiological and cognitive measures

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Neuroscience
• Performance Studies
• Embodied Cognition

Background:

• Human ability to perceive and synchronize with dance is well-documented, but research primarily focuses on rhythmic stimuli.
• Contemporary dance, often non-rhythmic and slow, presents a unique challenge for studying entrainment and subjective experience.

Purpose of the Study:

• Investigate entrainment effects in spectators of slow, non-rhythmic contemporary dance.
• Examine the relationship between subjective experience and entrainment (physiological and cognitive).
• Explore how attention to breathing and body movements influences entrainment.

Main Methods:

• Participants observed a slow, non-rhythmic contemporary dance performance.
• Physiological entrainment assessed via cardiovascular and respiratory coordination.
• Cognitive entrainment measured using time distortion tasks.
• Subjective experiences collected through questionnaires.

Main Results:

• A positive correlation was found between psychological entrainment and attention to breathing (self or dancers').
• Cognitive entrainment (time underestimation) correlated positively with attention to own breathing and dancers' muscles.
• Results suggest a strong link between attentional focus on breathing and entrainment phenomena.

Conclusions:

• Perceiving slow, non-rhythmic dance can induce entrainment effects.
• Attention to breathing appears to be a key factor in both physiological and cognitive entrainment during dance spectating.
• This study validates a quantitative situated paradigm for dance perception research.