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

Abstract

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.