Examining Audiovisual Entrainment to Rhythm: Contingency-Based Gamification May Generate Divergent Learning Outcomes

Undergraduate Review Volume 19 Article 12 2025 Examining Audiovisual Entrainment to Rhythm: ContingencyBased Gamification May Generate Divergent Learning Outcomes Jevaughn Barnett Follow this and additional works at: https://vc.bridgew.edu/undergrad_rev Recommended Citation Barnett, Jevaughn (2025). Examining Audiovisual Entrainment to Rhythm: Contingency-Based Gamification May Generate Divergent Learning Outcomes. Undergraduate Review, 19, 111-118. Available at: https://vc.bridgew.edu/undergrad_rev/vol19/iss1/12 This item is available as part of Virtual Commons, the open-access institutional repository of Bridgewater State University, Bridgewater, Massachusetts. Copyright © 2025 Jevaughn Barnett COLLEGE OF HUMANITIES AND SOCIAL SCIENCES Examining Audiovisual Entrainment to Rhythm: Contingency-Based Gamification May Generate Divergent Learning Outcomes Jevaughn Barnett Introduction Rhythm is an important feature of our everyday lives and is instrumental in music and dance. It is also an important property across many areas of human interaction. For example, a group of runners is spotted on the side of the road, off to some unknown finish line. For a moment, their pace becomes secondary, and their form becomes the center of attention. They appear to be a singular machine moving together as their knees and elbows drive in synchrony. This form and rhythm are not just something that onlookers take notice of, but the runners themselves also do, whether they are conscious of it or not. This rhythmic biological movement is not only noticed in limb coordination but in the human eye, and even in other life forms, like the synchrony of fireflies flashing. In the Rhythm field, researchers refer to this as interpersonal coordination, which falls under the broader area of dynamical entrainment (Richardson et al., 2007). This area was the first to recognize that visually tracking rhythmic patterns aids in synchronized responses to the rhythm. The present investigation is particularly interested in the ability of the eye to synchronize to audio-visual rhythmic patterns, a precursory step to motor synchronization. Because of the intuitiveness of sensation and perception, different ideas arise to make sense of how things are computed in the brain. Therefore, theories came about through simple observation and common sense, but they are just theories. For instance, a past assumption of the field of perception was that audition is for temporal processing while vision is for spatial processing (Repp & Penel, 2002, 2004). However, Hove et al. (2010) demonstrated that the use of congruent rhythmic and visual-spatial information greatly increases a person’s ability to synchronize hand movements to the rhythmic information, and even more so with additional auditory input. Other studies have also reported similar findings of increased motor synchrony to visual rhythms when motion was incorporated in the visual stimuli (Grahn, 2012). Research shows that processing of rhythm exists across our senses, and the current study examines how visual rhythm perception informs learning and attention regulation. There is a large body of research on auditory rhythm, with some even pointing out how it can be an attention regulator and aid motor synchronization (Large & Jones, 1999). However, there is limited research about audio-visual rhythm significantly playing a role in everyday life. In perception research, visual stimuli are more often used to study spatial tracking. Thus, it can be overlooked that visual stimuli carry important temporal information as well. However, Schmidt et al. (2007) highlighted how visual tracking directly helped in the entrainment of participants' swinging actions. The participants were tasked to follow oscillating images, which were letters on a screen, while swinging a pendulum. The study showed visual tracking-enabled unconscious coordination of limb movements to the rhythmic stimuli. BRIDGEWATER STATE UNIVERSITY | 111 COLLEGE OF HUMANITIES AND SOCIAL SCIENCES Without the visual tracking of the oscillating stimuli, the pendulum swing did not become synchronized to the visual stimuli, highlighting the role vision plays in synchronous responses to environmental rhythms (Schmidt et al., 2007). The current study is part of a larger investigation of how participants can use audiovisual rhythms to inform their ability to synchronize to patterns. The first experiments provided a foundation for the subsequent investigations, demonstrating visual synchrony to an audio-visual rhythmic stimulus of a tweeting bird (B, 2019, B et al 2024). Here, we ask if making the auditory stimulus contingent upon a predictive look would improve synchrony to the same pattern. This addition attempts to examine the limits of rhythm as an attention regulator, or in this case, whether the gamification of the experiment will confirm implicit rhythmic learning abilities. Gamification involves incorporating elements of play into non-game settings to make activities more engaging and appealing (Thom et al., 2012). The contingency factor is this experiment's version of gamification; the increased motivation from the game-like condition drives the hypothesis. We hypothesized that gamification would increase eye-synchronization in participants to rhythmic stimuli, in other words, improve learning and attention. Methods Participants For this contingency study, 46 participants completed the study. Participants were drawn from the undergraduate student population at Bridgewater State University. Additionally, 12 participants had to be excluded because they did not actively engage in 50% or more of the experiment based on eye-tracker data. For example, they were focusing specifically on the flower and not following the bird. Others were excluded because of technical difficulty (3 participants), which included equipment malfunctions or a participant’s use of makeup or eyewear that could interfere 112 | THE UNDERGRADUATE REVIEW 2025 with the eye-tracker. All participants were randomly assigned to a timing condition that was either rhythmic or randomized timing. Procedure In this study, the Eyelink 1000 Plus eye-tracker was used with the software Experiment Builder to present stimuli (SR Research Ltd., n.d.). The audiovisual stimulus was an animated tweeting bird moving clockwise to six set locations with stop-animation. Six areas of interest were defined for the six bird locations and one for the center distractor of a flower (Figure 1). The study began with a calibration procedure (9-point calibration) to train the eye-tracking system to the participants' eye movements across the screen. Participants’ initial eye contact to each bird's appearance in the six locations was recorded and categorized as either anticipatory or reactive. The timing of that first look was recorded in milliseconds relative to the time of the bird’s appearance at that location. Looks that first occurred in anticipation of the bir (...truncated)