Musical Expectancy in Squat Sonification For People Who Struggle With Physical Activity

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Date
2017-06Author
Newbold, Joseph W.
Bianchi-Berthouze, Nadia
Gold, Nicolas E.
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Physical activity is important for a healthy lifestyle. However, it
can be hard to stay engaged with exercise and this can often lead to
avoidance. Sonification has been used to support physical activity
through the optimisation/correction of movement. Though previous
work has shown how sonification can improve movement execution
and motivation, the specific mechanisms of motivation have
yet to be investigated in the context of challenging exercises. We
investigate the role of music expectancy as a way to leverage people’s
implicit and embodied understanding of music within movement
sonification to provide information on technique while also
motivating continuation of movement and rewarding its completion.
The paper presents two studies showing how this musically informed
sonification can be used to support the squat movement.
The results show how musical expectancy impacted people’s perception
of their own movement, in terms of reward, motivation and
movement behaviour and the way in which they moved.