IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0128357.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Is Beauty in the Eyes of the Beholder? Aesthetic Quality versus Technical Skill in Movement Evaluation of Tai Chi

Author

Listed:
  • Paola Zamparo
  • Elena Zorzi
  • Sara Marcantoni
  • Paola Cesari

Abstract

The aim of this study was to compare experts to naïve practitioners in rating the beauty and the technical quality of a Tai Chi sequence observed in video-clips (of high and middle level performances). Our hypothesis are: i) movement evaluation will correlate with the level of skill expressed in the kinematics of the observed action but ii) only experts will be able to unravel the technical component from the aesthetic component of the observed action. The judgments delivered indicate that both expert and non-expert observers are able to discern a good from a mediocre performance; however, as expected, only experts discriminate the technical from the aesthetic component of the action evaluated and do this independently of the level of skill shown by the model (high or middle level performances). Furthermore, the judgments delivered were strongly related to the kinematic variables measured in the observed model, indicating that observers rely on specific movement kinematics (e.g. movement amplitude, jerk and duration) for action evaluation. These results provide evidence of the complementary functional role of visual and motor action representation in movement evaluation and underline the role of expertise in judging the aesthetic quality of movements.

Suggested Citation

  • Paola Zamparo & Elena Zorzi & Sara Marcantoni & Paola Cesari, 2015. "Is Beauty in the Eyes of the Beholder? Aesthetic Quality versus Technical Skill in Movement Evaluation of Tai Chi," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(6), pages 1-13, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0128357
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0128357
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0128357
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0128357&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0128357?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. William M. Brown & Lee Cronk & Keith Grochow & Amy Jacobson & C. Karen Liu & Zoran Popović & Robert Trivers, 2005. "Dance reveals symmetry especially in young men," Nature, Nature, vol. 438(7071), pages 1148-1150, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Tiffany Field, 2016. "Tai Chi Research Review," Journal of Complementary Medicine & Alternative Healthcare, Juniper Publishers Inc., vol. 1(1), pages 1-16, November.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.

      More about this item

      Statistics

      Access and download statistics

      Corrections

      All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0128357. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

      If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

      If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

      If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

      For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

      Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

      IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.