Joint Rhythmic Movement Increases 4-Year-Old Children's Prosocial Sharing and Fairness Toward Peers

Can rhythm-mediated reward boost learning, memory, and social connection? Perspectives for future research

Studies of rhythm processing and of reward have progressed separately, with little connection between the two. However, consistent links between rhythm and reward are beginning to surface, with research suggesting that synchronization to rhythm is rewarding, and that this rewarding element may in turn also boost this synchronization. The current mini review shows that the combined study of rhythm and reward can be beneficial to better understand their independent and combined roles across two central aspects of cognition: 1) learning and memory, and 2) social connection and interpersonal synchronization; which have so far been studied largely independently. From this basis, it is discussed how connections between rhythm and reward can be applied to learning and memory and social connection across different populations, taking into account individual differences, clinical populations, human development, and animal research. Future research will need to consider the rewarding nature of rhythm, and that rhythm can in turn boost reward, potentially enhancing other cognitive and social processes.

Musical engagement as a duet of tight synchrony and loose interpretability

Joint engagement in music often facilitates positive social interaction, effectively shifting participants' perspective from the individual to the collective. The result is tight coordination and uniformity between participants, but at the same time, also remarkable flexibility and creativity. How does music achieve such a fine balance between the strict alignment necessary for coordination, and the substantial latitude necessary for experimentation? To address this question, I propose to analyze joint music engagement within the tight-loose theoretical framework broadly used in the social sciences. Tight-loose theory was originally developed for distinguishing between two archetypical cultural tendencies. On the one hand, tightness, which denotes stringent adherence to social norms, and on the other hand, looseness, which refers to a more flexible and less restrictive attitude towards norms. I posit that the flexible form of collaboration characteristic of musical interaction is due to a coexistence of tightness and looseness within joint engagement in music. I argue that the tight aspects of music can be attributed to its rhythmic structure, which requires continuous and precise temporal alignment between participants. Indeed, when experienced on its own, outside of a musical context, interpersonal synchrony has been repeatedly shown to enhance diverse positive social capacities such as bonding, collaboration and affiliation between interacting individuals, but at the expense of increasing conformity, blind obedience and even hostility towards non-group members. These effects are consistent with synchrony driving a tight interaction, inducing a sense of common group membership (CGM), which can endow music with necessary rigor and order. In contrast, the loose side of music may pertain to the ambiguity in meaning and intention expressed by music, which leaves ample room for interpretation and improvisation. I thus propose that the combined tight-loose nature of music, can simultaneously enhance positive social behaviors and reduce negative ones, leading to a tolerant form of group membership (TGM).

Judgment of togetherness in performances by musical duos

Musicians experience varying degrees of togetherness with their co-performers when playing in ensembles. However, little is known about how togetherness is experienced by audiences and how interpersonal dynamics in body motion and sound support the judgment of togetherness. This research investigates audience sensitivity to audio and visual markers of interperformer coordination and expressivity in ensembles, in relation to modality of stimulus presentation and audience music background. A set of duo ensemble performances, comprising motion capture recordings of the musicians' upper bodies and instruments, were presented to participants with varying music background, including novices and semi-professional musicians. Participants were required to: (i) watch and listen, (ii) only watch, and (iii) only listen to the selected recordings, whilst providing dynamic ratings of how much togetherness between musicians they perceived. Results demonstrate that sound intensity and similarity in right arm motion (quantified using cross-wavelet transform analysis) were significant predictors of rated togetherness in novices, whilst sound synchronization and chest motion coordination predicted togetherness responses in semi-professional musicians. These results suggest the relevance of the quality of body motion coordination and of certain features of the audio outputs in the audience perception of togetherness. This research contributes to a better understanding of the perceptual mechanisms supporting socio-cognitive judgments of joint action activities.

Children's perception of interpersonal coordination during joint painting

Interpersonal coordination is important for many joint activities. A special case of interpersonal coordination is synchronization, which is required for the performance of many activities, but is also associated with diverse positive social and emotional attributes. The extent to which these effects are due to the reliance on synchrony for task performance or to its specific rhythmic characteristics, is not clear. To address these questions, we considered a more general form of interpersonal coordination, implemented during joint artmaking. This is a non-typical context for interpersonal coordination, not required for task success, and smoother and more loosely-structured than more standard forms of synchronous coordination. Therefore, comparing interpersonal coordination with non-coordination during shared painting, could help reveal general social-emotional reactions to coordination. To gain a more 'naïve' perspective we focused on children, and staged coordinated and non-coordinated art interactions between an adult and a child, asking child observers to judge various variables reflecting the perceived bond between the painters. We found an overall stronger perceived bond for the coordination condition. These results demonstrate that even a non-typical form of interpersonal coordination could be attributed with positive social and emotional qualities, a capacity revealed already in childhood, with possible implications for development.

The intrapersonal and interpersonal consequences of interpersonal synchrony

Interpersonal synchrony, the time-matching behaviors, is pervasive in human interactions. This resonation of movements or other forms was generally considered as one of critical survival skills for humans, as the important consequences of synchronizing with other persons in review of the empirical data in this article. These include positive affects towards and between interacting partners, but also include complex effects on the individual level. The intrapersonal effects of interpersonal synchrony are varied with positive or negative ones, including cognitive style, attitude bias, mood state, self-regulatory ability, and academic performance. At the interpersonal level, synchronized movement consistently affects the interaction with the partner and his/her affiliations, but they can be eliminated or magnified by several moderators, such as physiological arousal, shared intentionality, group bias, and musical rhythm. Finally, the research discussed the possible mechanisms underlying the effects of interpersonal synchrony in psychological and biological aspects.

Social context facilitates visuomotor synchrony and bonding in children and adults

Interpersonal synchrony is a fundamental part of human social interaction, with known effects on facilitating social bonding. Moving in time with another person facilitates prosocial behaviour, however, it is unknown if the degree of synchronisation predicts the degree of social bonding. Similarly, while people readily fall in synchrony even without being instructed to do so, we do not know whether such spontaneous synchronisation elicits similar prosocial effects as instructed synchronisation. Across two studies, we investigated how context (social vs non-social stimulus) and instruction (instructed vs uninstructed) influenced synchronisation accuracy and bonding with the interaction partner in adults and children. The results revealed improved visuomotor synchrony within a social, compared to non-social, context in adults and children. Children, but not adults, synchronised more accurately when instructed to synchronise than when uninstructed. For both children and adults, synchronisation in a social context elicited stronger social bonding towards an interaction partner as compared to synchronisation in a non-social context. Finally, children's, but not adults', degree of synchrony with the partner was significantly associated with their feelings of social closeness. These findings illuminate the interaction of sensorimotor coupling and joint action in social contexts and how these mechanisms facilitate synchronisation ability and social bonding.

Moving From Me to We: Interpersonal Coordination’s Effects on Self-Construal

We all move in time together throughout our lives, and doing so has been shown to lead to more pro-social attitudes and behaviors towards co-actors. However, little research has investigated how coordinated movement affects how individuals feel about themselves. This mixed-methods study took self-generated qualitative responses of how participants construed their own identities after either coordinated movement or a carefully matched control task. Responses were analysed qualitatively using thematic analyses, and quantitatively using content analysis. Four themes were identified from thematic analysis, and inferential statistical testing showed significant differences in how participants construed their identities post coordination (cf. control). Participants in the coordinated condition generated a higher proportion of interdependent (social) rather than independent (personal) self-construals, driven by differences in broad social structures/constructs rather than close specific social relations. Furthermore, participants in the coordinated condition reported less mental state items, and more sexual/romantic items. These findings may explain how and why coordinated movement leads to prosociality amongst those who take part, by leading individuals to think of themselves and each other in group terms.

Flourishing in Resonance: Joint Resilience Building Through Music and Motion

Worldwide, children face adverse childhood experiences, being exposed to risks ranging from, exposure to political violence and forced migration over the deleterious effects of climate change, to unsafe cultural practices. As a consequence, children that seek refuge or migrate to European countries are extremely vulnerable, often struggling with integration in school, peer community, and their broader social circle. This multifaceted struggle can derive from external factors, such as the adaptation process and contact with other children, or internal factors such as the fears and trauma that every child carries within them since they departed from their homeland. To bounce, grow, connect, and create in both adversity and opportunity, children need to build resilience, i.e., the capacity of an individual to maintain stable psychological functioning throughout the course of adversity. On the one hand, building resilience requires developing a set of individual skills (internal protective factors), such as self-control, emotion regulation, self-esteem, and agency. On the other hand, building resilience involves developing social skills (external protective factors), connection, and close relationships. In this theoretical contribution, we review and map existing research to argue that activities based on the combination of music and movement has a strong potential to intensively build resilience. First, we connect the concepts of resilience and eudaimonia, based on the protective factors and key components of resilience. Then we discuss how music and movement, separately, may contribute to building resilience. Next, drawing on the basic mechanisms of musical sense-making, we argue that through combining music and movement, children engage in empowering musical sense-making processes that support building resilience, and in this way, support them to grow together and deeply experience eudaimonic values such as self-awareness, confidence and self-esteem, personal autonomy, connection, belonging, and bonding. Finally, we connect theory to practice. Based on the presented theoretical elaborations and on the authors’ experience as practitioners, we propose a set of guiding principles for the design of movement-based musical activities that foster the internal and external factors necessary to build resilience.

A Space for Collaborative Creativity. How Collective Improvising Shapes 'a Sense of Belonging'

In this contribution, we draw on findings from a non-formal, community music project to elaborate on the relationship between the concept of eudaimonia, as defined by Seligman, the interactive dimensions of collective free improvisation, and the concept of collaborative creativity. The project revolves around The Ostend Street Orkestra (TOSO), a music ensemble within which homeless adults and individuals with a psychiatric or alcohol/drug related background engage in collective musical improvisation. Between 2017 and 2019 data was collected through open interviews and video recordings of rehearsals and performances. Participant data was analyzed through inductive analysis based on the principles of grounded theory. One interesting finding was the discrepancy in the participant interviews between social relationships indicative of a negative affect about social group interaction versus strong feelings of group coherence and belonging. Video recordings of performances and rehearsals showed clear enjoyment and pleasure while playing music. Alongside verbal reflection through one-on-one interviews video recordings and analysis of moment-to moment observations should be used, in order to capture the complexity of community music projects with homeless people. The initial open coding was aligned with the five elements of the PERMA model. Overall, we observed more focus on Relationship (sense of belonging), Engagement (flow in rehearsals and performances) and Meaning (belonging to something greater than yourself) and less on Positive Emotion and Accomplishment (goal setting).

Interactional synchrony: signals, mechanisms and benefits

Many group-living animals, humans included, occasionally synchronize their behavior with that of conspecifics. Social psychology and neuroscience have attempted to explain this phenomenon. Here we sought to integrate results around three themes: the stimuli, the mechanisms and the benefits of interactional synchrony. As regards stimuli, we asked what characteristics, apart from temporal regularity, prompt synchronization and found that stimulus modality and complexity are important. The high temporal resolution of the auditory system and the relevance of socio-emotional information endow auditory, multimodal, emotional and somewhat variable and adaptive sequences with particular synchronizing power. Looking at the mechanisms revealed that traditional perspectives emphasizing beat-based representations of others' signals conflict with more recent work investigating the perception of temporal regularity. Timing processes supported by striato-cortical loops represent any kind of repetitive interval sequence fairly automatically. Additionally, socio-emotional processes supported by posterior superior temporal cortex help endow such sequences with value motivating the extent of synchronizing. Synchronizing benefits arise from an increased predictability of incoming signals and include many positive outcomes ranging from basic information processing at the individual level to the bonding of dyads and larger groups.

Infant-adult synchrony in spontaneous and nonspontaneous interactions

Infant-adult synchrony has been reported through observational and experimental studies. Nevertheless, synchrony is addressed differently in both cases. While observational studies measure synchrony in spontaneous infant-adult interactions, experimental studies manipulate it, inducing nonspontaneous synchronous and asynchronous interactions. A still unsolved question is to what extent differ spontaneous synchrony from the nonspontaneous one, experimentally elicited. To address this question, we conducted a study to compare synchrony in both interactional contexts. Forty-three 14-month-old infants were randomly assigned to one of two independent groups: (1) the spontaneous interaction context, consisting of a storytime session; and (2) the nonspontaneous interaction context, where an assistant bounced the infant in synchrony with a stranger. We employed an optical motion capture system to accurately track the time and form of synchrony in both contexts. Our findings indicate that synchrony arising in spontaneous exchanges has different traits than synchrony produced in a nonspontaneous interplay. The evidence presented here offers new insights for rethinking the study of infant-adult synchrony and its consequences on child development.

Developmental trajectory of interpersonal motor alignment: Positive social effects and link to social cognition

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Interpersonal motor alignment (IMA) has positive effects on healthy social life.

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IMA - mimicry, synchrony, automatic imitation - is studied throughout development.

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It relies on motor resonance brain mechanisms identified throughout development.

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It is modulated by contextual and personal factors.

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IMA is underinvestigated in adolescence, yet it may aid to enhance resilience.

Interpersonal motor alignment is a ubiquitous behavior in daily social life. It is a building block for higher social cognition, including empathy and mentalizing and promotes positive social effects. It can be observed as mimicry, synchrony and automatic imitation, to name a few. These phenomena rely on motor resonance processes, i.e., a direct link between the perception of an action and its execution. While a considerable literature debates its underlying mechanisms and measurement methods, the question of how motor alignment comes about and changes in ontogeny all the way until adulthood, is rarely discussed specifically. In this review we will focus on the link between interpersonal motor alignment, positive social effects and social cognition in infants, children, and adolescents, demonstrating that this link is present early on in development. Yet, in reviewing the existing literature pertaining to social psychology and developmental social cognitive neuroscience, we identify a knowledge gap regarding the healthy developmental changes in interpersonal motor alignment especially in adolescence.

Still want to help? Interpersonal coordination's effects on helping behaviour after a 24 hour delay

A fast-growing literature is establishing how moving in time together has pro-social consequences, though no work to date has explored the persistence of these effects over time. Across two studies, people who had previously performed coordinated movements were over three times more likely to give their time to help their co-actor when asked 24 hours later than those who had performed a similar but uncoordinated task. Findings showed that group-level categorisation, but not social affiliation, partially mediated helping behaviour. This provides preliminary evidence that the pro-social effects of coordination are sustainable over a longer period than previously reported, and that the effects of coordination upon pro-social motivation may be more related to changes in group level categorisations than increased social affiliations.

Music-Evoked Reward and Emotion: Relative Strengths and Response to Intervention of People With ASD

This review presents research findings showing that music is a unique domain to assess perception, reward, emotion, and associated physiological reactions and neural circuitry of people with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). There is growing evidence, reported in several studies in this review article, indicating that music is a relative strength of people with ASD including musical pitch perception, musical memory, and identification of music-evoked emotions. Listening to music activates neural circuits of reward and emotion response, which are described. Research presented shows adults with ASD also activate these systems when listening to music, although there may be developmental differences in the physiological and neural response to music in childhood and adolescence alongside typical behavioral response. Nonetheless, studies reviewed lend support to the use of music therapy and education for people with ASD, specifically to improve social skills and communication. Neural correlates of response to music therapy and education are also discussed. Taken together, findings reviewed provide evidence for music as a strength-based approach for ASD to assess reward and emotion response and as a powerful tool for intervention.

Empathic perspective taking promotes interpersonal coordination through music

Coordinated behavior promotes collaboration among humans. To shed light upon this relationship, we investigated whether and how interpersonal coordination is promoted by empathic perspective taking (EPT). In a joint music-making task, pairs of participants rotated electronic music-boxes, producing two streams of musical sounds that were meant to be played synchronously. Participants – who were not musically trained – were assigned to high and low EPT groups based on pre-experimental assessments using a standardized personality questionnaire. Results indicated that high EPT pairs were generally more accurate in synchronizing their actions. When instructed to lead the interaction, high and low EPT leaders were equally cooperative with followers, making their performance tempo more regular, presumably in order to increase their predictability and help followers to synchronize. Crucially, however, high EPT followers were better able to use this information to predict leaders’ behavior and thus improve interpersonal synchronization. Thus, empathic perspective taking promotes interpersonal coordination by enhancing accuracy in predicting others’ behavior while leaving the aptitude for cooperation unaltered. We argue that such predictive capacity relies on a sensorimotor mechanism responsible for simulating others’ actions in an anticipatory manner, leading to behavioral advantages that may impact social cognition on a broad scale.

Music improves social communication and auditory-motor connectivity in children with autism

Music has been identified as a strength in people with Autism Spectrum Disorder; however, there is currently no neuroscientific evidence supporting its benefits. Given its universal appeal, intrinsic reward value and ability to modify brain and behaviour, music may be a potential therapeutic aid in autism. Here we evaluated the neurobehavioural outcomes of a music intervention, compared to a non-music control intervention, on social communication and brain connectivity in school-age children (ISRCTN26821793). Fifty-one children aged 6-12 years with autism were randomized to receive 8-12 weeks of music (n = 26) or non-music intervention (n = 25). The music intervention involved use of improvisational approaches through song and rhythm to target social communication. The non-music control was a structurally matched behavioural intervention implemented in a non-musical context. Groups were assessed before and after intervention on social communication and resting-state functional connectivity of fronto-temporal brain networks. Communication scores were higher in the music group post-intervention (difference score = 4.84, P = .01). Associated post-intervention resting-state brain functional connectivity was greater in music vs. non-music groups between auditory and subcortical regions (z = 3.94, P < .0001) and auditory and fronto-motor regions (z = 3.16, P < .0001). Post-intervention brain connectivity was lower between auditory and visual regions in the music compared to the non-music groups, known to be over-connected in autism (z = 4.01, P < .00001). Post-intervention brain connectivity in the music group was related to communication improvement (z = 3.57, P < .0001). This study provides the first evidence that 8-12 weeks of individual music intervention can indeed improve social communication and functional brain connectivity, lending support to further investigations of neurobiologically motivated models of music interventions in autism.