Marching
to the beat of a different drummer? In the first place, marching isn’t easy. We
take several years learning to walk and then fit young people spend weeks, if
the join the army, learning to march around in step with their colleagues to the
beat of the drum. And eventually, as we get older, neurological problems can
again make marching along a difficult thing to do.
So
as you walk, your motion – legs, torso, – move in a somewhat chaotic manner
rather than the regular one that we imagine. The chaos get worse as we age (no
surprise there). Sejdić et al
decide to see how much our chaos was reduced by a metronomic cadence delivered
aurally, visually or haptically (1).
Fifteen twenty-somethings were sent round a rectangular course and
their natural gait logged. After that they were sent round with backpacks
full of metronomes. Of course, they weren’t all sent round at the same time or
the chaos would have been wonderful to behold.
With personal metronomes linked to earphones, a light on a pole
sticking out of their hat or a vibrator in their glove, the walkers walked and
the regularity of their motion was logged.
Regularly flashing lights and vibrating gloves had some effect on
chaos reduction in the walkers walking round their exercise yard, but the
largest effect was the auditory sound beamed into their ear from their backpack
feeding the earphones.
Everyone was marching to the beat of a different drummer, their
own beat having been established at the start, but it would have been
interesting to have had the metronomes changed and then see how successful the
devices would have been in bringing the walkers into the new cadence and whether
the chaos would have increased.
What fractions of their natural beat frequency would be
comfortable or uncomfortable? So how easy is for people to change and start marching
to the beat of a different drummer than their own?
