The Moving Mandala: Exploring the Pro-Social Effects of Musical and Non-Musical Synchrony in Children in a Virtual World

• Liam Cross ^[1] ; Narcis Pares ^[2] ; Olga Gali ^[2] ; Sena Beste Ercan ^[2] ; Batuhan Sayis ^[2] ; Pamela Heaton ^[3] ; Gray Atherton ^[1]
  1. [1] Plymouth University

     Plymouth University

     Reino Unido

     
  2. [2] Universitat Pompeu Fabra

     Universitat Pompeu Fabra

     Barcelona, España

     
  3. [3] Goldsmiths University

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• Localización: EJIHPE: European Journal of Investigation in Health, Psychology and Education, ISSN 2174-8144, ISSN-e 2254-9625, Vol. 15, Nº. 3, 2025, págs. 39-39
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • Synchronous movement between individuals has been shown to increase pro-sociality, such as closeness and generosity. To date, synchrony research tests these effects using a variety of movement tasks, including musical and non-musical coordination. However, musical versus non-musical synchrony may have separable pro-social effects. To test this, we had 60 children immersed in an augmented reality space called the ‘Moving Mandala’ where they moved asynchronously with only visual cues, synchronously with only visual cues or synchronously with musical and visual cues. We then tested for differences in pro-social effects using sharing and proxemics tasks. Results showed that while the synchrony version of the mandala led to greater closeness in the proxemics task, the musical synchrony led to more pro-sociality on the sharing task. The implications of these findings are discussed.