Imagine a dance floor, where two people move in perfect sync. Their bodies mirror each other, creating a mesmerizing display of coordination. But what factors contribute to our perception of their coupling? Researchers investigated this question by studying the relationship between visual perception and body movements in dancing dyads. They found that the degree of frontal orientation between dancers strongly influences perceived coupling. However, other factors like postural congruence, movement frequencies, time-delayed relations, and horizontal mirroring also play a role. Using motion capture technology, they analyzed the movements of 8 dyads who danced freely to different music genres. Surprising results showed that kinematic coupling estimates were higher than expected, suggesting a social dimension of entrainment in dance. Furthermore, observers rated the perceived similarity and interaction between dancers based on silent animations generated from the motion capture data. The study revealed that slower simultaneous horizontal gestures and posture bounding volumes were linked to perceived similarity, while faster simultaneous gestures and sequential coupling were associated with perceived interaction. Notably, dyads who appeared more coupled tended to mirror each other’s movements. This research sheds light on the intricate language of movement and its impact on our social cognition.

Abstract
Body movement is a primary nonverbal communication channel in humans. Coordinated social behaviors, such as dancing together, encourage multifarious rhythmic and interpersonally coupled movements from which observers can extract socially and contextually relevant information. The investigation of relations between visual social perception and kinematic motor coupling is important for social cognition. Perceived coupling of dyads spontaneously dancing to pop music has been shown to be highly driven by the degree of frontal orientation between dancers. The perceptual salience of other aspects, including postural congruence, movement frequencies, time-delayed relations, and horizontal mirroring remains, however, uncertain. In a motion capture study, 90 participant dyads moved freely to 16 musical excerpts from eight musical genres, while their movements were recorded using optical motion capture. A total from 128 recordings from 8 dyads maximally facing each other were selected to generate silent 8-s animations. Three kinematic features describing simultaneous and sequential full body coupling were extracted from the dyads. In an online experiment, the animations were presented to 432 observers, who were asked to rate perceived similarity and interaction between dancers. We found dyadic kinematic coupling estimates to be higher than those obtained from surrogate estimates, providing evidence for a social dimension of entrainment in dance. Further, we observed links between perceived similarity and coupling of both slower simultaneous horizontal gestures and posture bounding volumes. Perceived interaction, on the other hand, was more related to coupling of faster simultaneous gestures and to sequential coupling. Also, dyads who were perceived as more coupled tended to mirror their pair’s movements.

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