Seeing Music, Hearing Dance: The Role of Affect in Music and Dance Interactions

Date
2011
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Music
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CPGC: Conference/Workshops
Haverford College. Department of Psychology
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Thesis
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eng
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Abstract
Many studies have looked at the effects of musical soundtracks on films. Music has been shown to bias the emotional impact of an accompanying film scene and to provide a schematic framework for interpreting the visual material. The reverse relationship also applies in which visual information biases perception of musical stimuli. The purpose of the present research was to investigate, in a set of two experiments, whether such a reciprocal relationship also applies to music and dance. Participants were presented with melodies and dances that varied in affect (positive, negative, or neutral) and then completed a series of perceptual ratings. Our unique experimental design allowed us to address several questions regarding music and dance perception in cases of mood ambiguity, mood congruency, mood incongruency, and modality dominance. Our results suggest that dance and music are perceived as individual entities and do not influence each other as occurs in music and film or musical performance. However, there were significant effects for a mood-congruent bias, such that the mood of the music influenced judgments of dance film clips in a mood-congruent fashion and dance affect biased music ratings in a similar way. Strengths, limitations, and practical applications of the present study are discussed as well as suggestions for future research.
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