Sound-Accompanying Movements Enhance Perceived Arousal in Music Performance Even from a Distance

For each member of a concert audience, the experience is a unique combination of multisensory perception of music performance, transmission of the auditory, visual, and vibrotactile cues in the concert hall, and a specific social frame. This study focuses, in an ecological but reduced scope, on audio-visual interaction in perceived arousal as a function of the observer's distance from stage and the amount of sound-accompanying movements exerted by the performer.

Perceived arousal was measured in an audio-visual experiment using English horn performances. Audio and video recordings were made in a concert hall from short and long distance with and without sound-accompanying movements. Participants (N=32) rated perceived arousal continuously during watching, listening, or watching and listening. Sound-accompanying movements enhanced perceived arousal in audio-visual compared to auditory-only perception, while an immobile performance had a diminishing effect.

In both sensory modalities, less arousal was perceived at longer distance. However, the visually transmitted positive effect of sound-accompanying movements was stronger than the negative effect of distance which is caused by both auditory and visual cues. Thus, through the visual channel, sound-accompanying movements may compensate for being seated far away from the performer in a concert hall.