Name:Andrii Smykovskyi

School/Affiliation:McGill University, University of Oslo

Co-Authors:Jonna Vuoskoski, Bavo Van Kerrebroeck, & Caroline Palmer

Virtual or In-person:In-person

Short Bio:

Andrii Smykovskyi is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow in the Sequence Production Lab at McGill University. He joined the lab in September 2024. He earned a master’s degree in Sport Psychology from the National University of Physical Education and Sport of Ukraine in 2013, and a master’s in Human Movement Sciences from the University of Montpellier in 2019, where he later completed his PhD in 2023. His research examines interactional synchronization across a range of behaviors. At McGill, his work focuses on how emotions shape joint behavior from a multimodal perspective.

Abstract:

Background: Performing music collectively often elicits emotions. However, the impact of emotional states on group synchronization, a process influenced by individual differences in Spontaneous Production Rates (SPR), remains underexplored.
Design: In a solo production rate task, nonmusician adults tapped a familiar melody at a chosen comfortable spontaneous rate on a force sensor that generated melody tones over headphones. Subsequently, the randomly paired adults listened to 8 metronome taps and then continued tapping novel melodies synchronizing with their partner while attempting to maintain the cued-in tempo. Emotional states were manipulated through predetermined performance feedback with positive or negative evaluations, delivered in matched (both participants received positive or negative feedback) or mismatched (one positive, one negative) blocks, with feedback assumed to affect performance on the following trial. In addition, dyads completed trials without emotion induction before and after the emotion induction blocks. Each block was followed by social interaction questionnaires.
Results: Individuals' SPR varied broadly across individuals. Negative mean asynchronies were observed in all dyadic synchronization conditions, with faster-SPR partners tapping earlier than slower-SPR partners. Tempo analyses within each trial, based on inter-onset intervals, indicated greater joint rushing in the initial trials (without emotion induction) which decreased after the first emotion block and remained low, aligning with participants' arousal ratings. In addition, social ratings indicated that negative feedback may have hindered social bonding and lowered perceived synchronization success.
Implications: These findings highlight the importance of SPR as a factor in computational models of group synchronization and emotion induction in performance contexts.