The complexity-aesthetics relationship for musical rhythm is more fixed than flexible: Evidence from children and expert dancers

The urge to move to music (groove) depends in part on rhythmic syncopation in the music. For adults, the syncopation-groove relationship has an inverted-U shape: listen- ers want to move most to rhythms that have some, but not too much, syncopation. However, we do not know whether the syncopation-groove relationship is relatively sensitive to, or resistant to, a listener’s experience. In two sets of experiments, we tested whether the syncopation-groove relationship is affected by dance experience or changes through development in childhood. Dancers and nondancers rated groove for 50 rhythmic patterns varying in syncopation. Dancers’ and nondancers’ ratings did not differ (and Bayesian tests provided substantial evidence that they were equivalent) in termsofmean groove and the optimal level of syncopation. Similarly, ballet andhip-hop dancers’ syncopation-groove relationships did not differ. However, dancers had more robust syncopation-groove relationships (higher goodness-of-fit) than nondancers. Children (3–6 years old) completed two tasks to assess their syncopation-groove rela- tionships: In a 2-alternative-forced choice task, children compared rhythms from 2 of 3 possible levels of syncopation (low,medium, and high) and chosewhich rhythm in a pair was better for dancing. In a dance task, children danced to the same rhythms. Results from both tasks indicated that for children, as for adults,medium syncopation rhythms elicit more groove than low syncopation rhythms. A follow-up experiment replicated the 2-alternative-forced choice task results. Taken together, the results suggest the optimal level of syncopation for groove is resistant to experience, although experience may affect the robustness of the inverted-U relationship.