Effects of Interactive Sonification on Emotionally Expressive Walking Styles

This paper describes two experiments conducted to investigate the role of sonically simulated ground materials in modulating both production and recognition of walks performed with emotional intentions. The results of the first experiment showed that the involved auditory feedbacks affected the pattern of emotional walking in different ways, although such an influence manifested itself in more than one direction. The results of the second experiment showed the absence of an influence of the sound conditions on the recognition of the emotions from acoustic information alone. Similar results were found in both experiments for musically-trained and untrained participants. Our results suggest that tempo and sound level are two acoustical features important in both production and recognition of emotions in walking. In addition, the similarities of the presented results with those reported in the music performance domain, as well as the absence of an influence of musical expertise lend support to the “motor origin hypothesis of emotional expression in music” according to which a motor origin for the expression of emotions is common in all those domains of human activity that result in the generation of an acoustical signal.