The attribution of agency to sound influences associated motor activity, synchronisation and affiliation

Abstract

It has been suggested that musical engagement has implications for social behaviour, but in modern Western societies people often engage with musical sounds alone, which might suggest the experience is asocial. Given that musical sounds are normally thought to be arranged by an intentional human agent it is possible that listening to music in the absence of others is a form of social engagement. By investigating the ways that people engage with sound that they believe has been triggered by another person, it is possible to assess whether the experience really can be described as a social experience. This program of research therefore investigates the ways that people engage with sounds when they believe those sounds have been created by another person. We test three main hypotheses: (1) attributing agency to sound influences movement that occurs in time with that sound; (2) engagement with sound attributed to an agent is a form of social engagement; and (3) moving at the same time as sounds attributed to another person can influence subsequent affiliative behaviour expressed towards that person. By investigating whether synchronisation with sound attributed to another person can influence subsequent affiliative behaviour expressed towards that person we test whether engagement with sound attributed with agency can be a form of social engagement. Three experiments, reported in Chapter 4 and Chapter 5, demonstrate that this can be the case, and that both perceived and objectively measured synchrony can predict subsequent measures of affiliative behaviour when interacting with sound in the absence of another person. Specifically, by comparing in-phase synchronisation with anti-phase synchronisation we assess whether moving at the same time as sounds attributed to another person is a dominant influence on affiliative behaviour. Results show that moving at the same time as sounds influences subsequent affiliative behaviour more than moving out of time but these effects are at least partially mediated by greater experience of success in conditions involving movement in time with sounds. A further three experiments reported in Chapter 6 address an issue relating to the causal link between synchronisation and affiliation. Transcranial magnetic stimulation is used to evoke motor potentials in the finger to examine whether hearing sounds that have new associations with specific movements of another person can engage regions of the x brain involved in making the same movement oneself. This is shown to be the case for newly learnt associations between sound and movement when participants are exposed to visual pairing between movement and sound. We do not find evidence that this association can be learnt when sounds are heard that are known to be triggered by human movement, but are not visually paired with that movement. Two synchronisation experiments reported in Chapter 7 demonstrate that people synchronise better with sounds thought to be triggered by a person compared with sounds thought to be triggered by a computer. This appears to be the consequence both of being told that another person is listening while synchronisation is occurring, as well as being told that an interaction partner is human. We conclude that people can experience engagement with sound attributed with agency in a social way, given that their experience of this engagement can influence subsequent affiliative behaviour. Movement simultaneity appears to be a major influence on subsequent affiliative behaviour, but this influence may in part be mediated by experience of task success when engaging with sound attributed to another person. While evidence was inconclusive regarding whether people can learn associations between sound and movement in the absence of visual information we do show that people can quickly learn associations between the movement of another person and sound. This research demonstrates that engagement with sound attributed with agency is a form of social engagement. Perception of sounds that are associated with other people may also in part be a motor process, and influence movement that occurs in time with sounds. If engagement with sound attributed with agency is both a social and motor process, then it is likely that listening to music is to some extent a form of social engagement.

Date of Award	2012
Original language	English