Effect of background on sensory evaluation for walking movement

Abstract

The elements that are perceived as beautiful in the beautiful gait are based on personal sensibility. Therefore, clarifying "elements of beauty" quantitatively requires analyzing the cognitive structure of individuals who perceived beautiful and why they evaluated as beautiful. However, the appearance, clothes, and background of a person who performs walking may affect the viewers' evaluation criteria. This study examined the effect of background on sensory evaluation of walking movements. We used an optical motion capture system to measure kinematic data such as joint angles during walking. The two types of gait were measured during the experiment; “slow (90 bpm)” and "fast (120 bpm)". Then the videos which were taken in the gait measurement were edited by adjusting the color saturation and brightness. The four videos were prepared; “slow – high color saturation and bright”, “slow – low color saturation and dark”, “fast – high color saturation and bright”, and “fast – low color saturation and dark”. Furthermore, we conducted a questionnaire survey as the subjective evaluation experiment. The evaluators watched the four videos and answered the questions how they felt. From the results of the kinematic data and the subjective evaluation experiment, we have concluded that the evaluators' impression for the walking movement might change depending on the walking speed and background color.