Recent theories of empathy highlight perception-action components as a basis for automatic responses to perceived emotions. Since music is universally based on human actions and often elicits strong emotions, it was hypothesized that empathy influences audiovisual estimations of emotional expression. In this study, the performance and perception of a string quartet was investigated using time-series analyses. Quartet musicians rated video presentations of their own performance, resulting in relationships between visual-only and auditory-only judgments as well as acoustical intensity measures. Independent observers accurately perceived the string quartet's expressive intentions in multimodal presentations. Observers with higher affective and overall empathy were more accurate at estimating the musicians' intentions. It is argued that empathy-via the perception of bodily motion-has an impact on the appreciation of performing arts such as music.

Common coding theory states that perception and action may reciprocally induce each other. Consequently, motor expertise should map onto perceptual consistency in specific tasks such as predicting the exact timing of a musical entry. To test this hypothesis, ten string musicians (motor experts), ten non-string musicians (visual experts), and ten non-musicians were asked to watch progressively occluded video recordings of a first violinist indicating entries to fellow members of a string quartet. Participants synchronised with the perceived timing of the musical entries. Results revealed significant effects of motor expertise on perception. Compared to visual experts and non-musicians, string players not only responded more accurately, but also with less timing variability. These findings provide evidence that motor experts’ consistency in movement execution—a key characteristic of expert motor performance—is mirrored in lower variability in perceptual judgements, indicating close links between action competence and perception.

The spontaneous motor tempo (SMT) describes the pace of regular and repeated movements such as hand clapping or walking. It is typically measured by letting people tap with their index finger at a pace that feels most natural and comfortable to them. A number of factors have been suggested to influence the SMT, such as age, time of the day, arousal, and potentially musical experience. This study aimed at investigating the effects of these factors in a combined and out-of-the-lab context by implementing the finger-tapping paradigm in an online experiment using a self-developed web application. Due to statistical multimodality in the distribution of participants' SMT (N = 3,576), showing peaks at modes of around 250 ms, a Gaussian mixture model was applied that grouped participants into six clusters, ranging from Very Fast (M = 265 ms, SD = 74) to Very Slow (M = 1,757 ms, SD = 166). These SMT clusters differed in terms of age, suggesting that older participants had a slower SMT, and time of the day, showing that the earlier it was, the slower participants' SMT. While arousal did not differ between the SMT clusters, more aroused participants showed faster SMTs across all normalized SMT clusters. Effects of musical experience were inconclusive. With a large international sample, these results provide insights into factors influencing the SMT irrespective of cultural background, which can be seen as a window into human timing processes.

The aim of the present study was to investigate if the perception of time is affected by actively attending to different metrical levels in musical rhythmic patterns. In an experiment with a repeated-measures design, musicians and nonmusicians were presented with musical rhythmic patterns played at three different tempi. They synchronized with multiple metrical levels (half notes, quarter notes, eighth notes) of these patterns using a finger-tapping paradigm and listened without tapping. After each trial, stimulus duration was judged using a verbal estimation paradigm. Results show that the metrical level participants synchronized with influenced perceived time: actively attending to a higher metrical level (half notes, longer intertap intervals) led to the shortest time estimations, hence time was experienced as passing more quickly. Listening without tapping led to the longest time estimations. The faster the tempo of the patterns, the longer the time estimation. While there were no differences between musicians and nonmusicians, those participants who tapped more consistently and accurately (as analyzed by circular statistics) estimated durations to be shorter. Thus, attending to different metrical levels in music, by deliberately directing attention and motor activity, affects time perception.

Aesthetic theories have long suggested perceptual advantages for prototypical exemplars of a given class of objects or events. Empirical evidence confirmed that morphed (quantitatively averaged) human faces, musical interpretations, and human voices are preferred over most individual ones. In this study, biological human motion was morphed and tested for prototype effects in task-specific actions, perceptual judgments, and kinematic characteristics. A motion capture system recorded the movements of six novice and six expert orchestral conductors while they performed typical beat patterns in time with a metronome. Point-light representations of individual conductors and morphs of experts, novices, and a grand average morph were generated. In a repeated-measures sensorimotor synchronization paradigm, participants tapped a finger in time with the conducting and provided evaluations of the gestures' characteristics. Quantitatively averaged conducting motion resulted in reduced jerk (i.e., smoother motion) as well as higher synchronization accuracy and tapping consistency. Perceived beat clarity and quality of the gestures correlated with the timing of vertical acceleration in the conductors' movements. While gestures of individual conductors were perceived to be more expressive, morphs appeared more conventional. Thus, due to smoother spatiotemporal profiles of morphs, perception and action advantages were observed for prototypes that are presumably based both on motor resonance mechanisms and cognitive representations.