Staff from the School of Psychology recently hosted the 14th Rhythm Production and Perception Workshop (RPPW) at the University of Birmingham.
RPPW is the primary international research conference for dissemination of time perception and movement timing related research and has been established for nearly thirty years. The conference, organised by Massimiliano Di Luca, Mark Elliott, Satoshi Endo, Juliane Honisch, Danni Sims and Alan Wing took place between 11th and 13th September.
Through sponsorship from TIMELY COST, the conference organisers were able to invite three keynote speakers who were experts across a range of topics. Andreas Daffertshofer (VU Amsterdam), presented an a very accessible talk on dynamical systems analysis of long term correlations in walking. Jenny Coull (University of Marseille) presented her work on the neuro-anatomy of directed attention in time. Finally, on the last day Laurel Trainor presented her pioneering work on timing and rhythm perception in young infants. Attendees also got to try their hand at conducting, thanks to a practical training session provided by local professional conductor and musician Dan Watson.
In addition to the main conference, a one day satellite tutorial workshop was also hosted on ‘Measuring Multi-person Timing’. This was a free workshop sponsored by the Experimental Psychology Society. Around 40 participants learnt, through practical hands on sessions, how to collect movement data from groups of individuals and then subsequently analyse and model the data.
