Many foundational questions in the psychology of music require cross-cultural approaches, yet the vast majority of work in the field to date has been conducted with Western participants and Western music. For cross-cultural research to thrive, it will require collaboration between people from different disciplinary backgrounds, as well as strategies for overcoming differences in assumptions, methods, and terminology. This position paper surveys the current state of the field and offers a number of concrete recommendations focused on issues involving ethics, empirical methods, and definitions of “music” and “culture.”

laban movement analysis, specifically effort-shape analysis, is offered as a system to study musicians' bodily expression. It proposes others' intentions are manifest in expressive bodily activity and understood through shared embodied processes. The present investigation evaluates whether the basic components of Laban analysis are reflected in perceptual judgments of recorded performances and, specifically, evaluates interjudge reliability for effort-shape analysis. Sixteen audio-visual excerpts of marimba pieces performed by two professional solo marimbists' (female and male) served as stimuli. Effort-shape analyses and interjudge reliability thereof were assessed through three different tasks: 1) verification task, 2) independent analysis task, 3) signal detection yes/no task. Professional musicians — two percussionists, a violinist, and a French hornist — acted as participants. High interjudge reliability was observed for transformation drive and shape components, but less so for basic effort action components. Mixed interjudge reliability results for basic effort actions, and differences between frequency observations, point to differences in participant's embodied expertise, task implementation, and training issues. Effort-shape analysis has potential to drive comparative and predictive research into musicians' bodily expression. Effort-shape provides a fine-grain temporal analysis of ecologically valid performance sequences.

TIME-KEEPING AMONG DANCERS WAS INVESTIGATED by measuring a dancer's movement in the presence and absence of music. If an internal clock was at work, then change from the ideal would manifest as scaling---consistently faster or slower unaccompanied performance; if time differences were due to lapsing, then sections from the with-music condition would be deleted, or material would be inserted into the no-music condition. Motion was recorded during ensemble performances of a four-minute choreographed piece with and without music. The median of 24 markers in the height dimension was analyzed for scaling and lapsing. Twenty percent of the variance was accounted for by sporadic scaling. Lapses---insertions and deletions---accounted for nearly all the speeding up---10.45 of 14 s. As in musical performance of memorized material, lapsing rather than scaling accounted for timing variations. Automation of lapsing and scaling detection has application in the analysis of music and dance time series data.