Motor pattern recognition by sound: A Gestalt unit for golf swing?

It has been shown, that humans are able to recognize their own movement by watching light-point displays. Other studies demonstrated, that acoustic stimuli can influence relative timing (RT) as well as overall duration (OD) of voluntary motor production and it suggests, that acoustic perception can provide a temporal motor representation of movements. In this study, we examined whether golfers are able to discriminate between the sounds associated to their own movements and those associated to other golfers. We recorded the sounds produced by athletes in sixty-five meters shots and used these tracks to create five stimuli, in which overall duration and relative timing were manipulated. The task of the subjects was to say whether each sound corresponded to his/her swing. We presented to each golfer auditory tracks corresponding to their own movement, and other golfers’ tracks having an equal RT and OD, an equal RT and different OD, a different RT and equal OD, or a different RT and OD. Results showed that golfers are able to recognize their own sounds. They wrongly recognize as their own sound the sound of other athletes having equal relative timing and overall duration. However, these conditions significantly differ from each other. These outcomes suggest, that temporal features are very important in sound recognition, but probably also other information is embedded in the sound. Results are consistent with a gestalt unit hypothesis for human movement.