Movement Sonification: Effects on Motor Learning beyond Rhythmic Adjustments

Sonification has been written about for 4 years. It is about time for our fucking failures of stroke associations to step up to the plate and write a stroke protocol on this. I can guarantee this won't occur.

Movement Sonification: Effects on Motor Learning beyond Rhythmic Adjustments

Alfred O. Effenberg^1*, Ursula Fehse¹, Gerd Schmitz¹, Bjoern Krueger² and Heinz Mechling³

• ¹Faculty of Humanities, Institute of Sports Science, Leibniz Universität Hannover, Hanover, Germany
• ²Computer Science, Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, Institute of Computer Science II, University of Bonn, Bonn, Germany
• ³Institute of Sport Gerontology, German Sport University Cologne, Cologne, Germany

Motor learning is based on motor perception and emergent perceptual-motor representations. A lot of behavioral research is related to single perceptual modalities but during last two decades the contribution of multimodal perception on motor behavior was discovered more and more. A growing number of studies indicates an enhanced impact of multimodal stimuli on motor perception, motor control and motor learning in terms of better precision and higher reliability of the related actions. Behavioral research is supported by neurophysiological data, revealing that multisensory integration supports motor control and learning. But the overwhelming part of both research lines is dedicated to basic research. Besides research in the domains of music, dance and motor rehabilitation, there is almost no evidence for enhanced effectiveness of multisensory information on learning of gross motor skills. To reduce this gap, movement sonification is used here in applied research on motor learning in sports. Based on the current knowledge on the multimodal organization of the perceptual system, we generate additional real-time movement information being suitable for integration with perceptual feedback streams of visual and proprioceptive modality. With ongoing training, synchronously processed auditory information should be initially integrated into the emerging internal models, enhancing the efficacy of motor learning. This is achieved by a direct mapping of kinematic and dynamic motion parameters to electronic sounds, resulting in continuous auditory and convergent audiovisual or audio-proprioceptive stimulus arrays. In sharp contrast to other approaches using acoustic information as error-feedback in motor learning settings, we try to generate additional movement information suitable for acceleration and enhancement of adequate sensorimotor representations and processible below the level of consciousness. In the experimental setting, participants were asked to learn a closed motor skill (technique acquisition of indoor rowing). One group was treated with visual information and two groups with audiovisual information (sonification vs. natural sounds). For all three groups learning became evident and remained stable. Participants treated with additional movement sonification showed better performance compared to both other groups. Results indicate that movement sonification enhances motor learning of a complex gross motor skill—even exceeding usually expected acoustic rhythmic effects on motor learning.

Introduction

When looking back to our sport classes, recalling how breaststroke swimming, the overhand technique in volleyball or even rowing was taught, we remember our teachers explaining and demonstrating the techniques. Technique acquisition in sports is usually shaped by visual demonstrations and verbal information as getting evident in popular sportscientific textbooks (Newell and Corcos, 1993; Schmidt and Lee, 2005). Also in perceptually directed research in sport science, processes of motor perception, motor control and motor learning have been studied primarily related to single sensory modalities and dominated by the visual domain (Williams et al., 1999, 2004; Abernethy, 2013). But on a closer view, motor behavior is a multimodal phenomenon: Motion can not only be observed visually but also perceived by the auditory and the tactile sense, and perception of one's own motion is just as well based on visual, auditory, kinesthetic, vestibular, and tactile information. Recent behavioral—as well as neurophysiological—research therefore focusses increasingly on audiomotor and multisensory contributions to the regulation of behavior (Frassinetti et al., 2002; Soto-Faraco et al., 2003; Calvert et al., 2004). Even though majority of work is localized in the field of basic research, also applied studies address the area of complex gross-motor behavior, often with a close link to biological motion perception (Barraclough et al., 2005; Bidet-Caulet et al., 2005; Mendonca et al., 2011).

Up to now, only a few studies are dealing with the multisensory influence on motor learning, and this is especially given for applied research related to gross motor motion, as being typical for sports. Therefore, the introduction will focus firstly on audiomotor information processing to identify the perceptual characteristics of audition, getting effective besides visual information on the regulation of behavior (Haueisen and Knoesche, 2001; Bangert and Altenmüller, 2003; Haslinger et al., 2005; Lahav et al., 2007). Afterwards multisensory perception is taken into account, with the focus on mechanisms of audiovisual information processing and related behavioral benefits. Then some studies using sonification to support motor control and motor learning are introduced.

Findings on the emergence of audiomotor co-activations and the multisensory integration mechanisms will be taken in consideration to determine how additional movement acoustics could be shaped to address audiomotor functions as well as multisensory integration sites within the central nervous system (CNS). With other words: How could an effective movement sonification be tailored and how could it get effective on motor learning? Here some neurophysiological work will be consulted. Based on these findings the own method of movement sonification will be developed combining dynamic and kinematic movement parameters into a 4-dimensional sonification. Movement sonification was applied in the present study to support motor learning in technique acquisition of indoor-rowing. To evaluate the impact of an additional movement sonification three groups were treated with different kinds of instructions and feedback over a training period of 3 weeks: One group was treated with visual information (video instruction + concurrent video feedback) and two groups with different kinds of audiovisual information (video/sonification instruction & real-time video/sonification feedback; video/motion attendant sound instruction & real-time video/motion attendant sounds feedback).

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