Characterizing the Emotional Context Induced by Music Listening and its Effects on Gait Initiation: Exploiting Physiological and Biomechanical Data

The ability to initiate gait involves a complex coordination between posture and movement, known as anticipatory postural adjustments (APAs). The emotional context in which gait initiation occurs can impact several spatio-temporal parameters, particularly the duration of APAs. While previous studies have used biologically relevant stimuli to induce emotions, such as images of pleasant or unpleasant scenes, to the best of our knowledge, the impact of the emotional context induced by music on gait initiation has not been explored yet. This paper presents a new dataset collected to study this impact. Objective biomechanical and physiological data were collected from participants during and after music listening, and subjective emotional responses were assessed using questionnaires. We also focused on two factors, liking judgment and familiarity, known to modulate emotions. Our preliminary analyses shows the impact of the emotional context induced by music on gait initiation, and confirms the strong importance of liking judgment and familiarity on the emotional context.