International Journal of Human Movement and Sports Sciences 10(3): 404-413, 2022 http://www.hrpub.org DOI: 10.13189/saj.2022.100306 Enhancing Visual Perception of Sports Quality in Rhythmic Gymnastics Routine by Increasing Congruence between Music and Movement Loo Fung Chiat 1,* , Loo Fung Ying 2 , Chua Yan Piaw 3 , Md Jais Ismail 4 1 Department of Music, Faculty of Human Ecology, Universiti Putra Malaysia, Malaysia 2 Department of Music, Faculty of Creative Arts, Universiti Malaya, Malaysia 3 Department of Mathematics & Science Education, Faculty of Education, Universiti Malaya, Malaysia 4 Conservatory of Music, College of Creative Arts, Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM), Malaysia Received March 9, 2022; Revised April 28, 2022; Accepted May 23, 2022 Cite This Paper in the following Citation Styles (a): [1] Loo Fung Chiat, Loo Fung Ying, Chua Yan Piaw, Md Jais Ismail , "Enhancing Visual Perception of Sports Quality in Rhythmic Gymnastics Routine by Increasing Congruence between Music and Movement," International Journal of Human Movement and Sports Sciences, Vol. 10, No. 3, pp. 404 - 413, 2022. DOI: 10.13189/saj.2022.100306. (b): Loo Fung Chiat, Loo Fung Ying, Chua Yan Piaw, Md Jais Ismail (2022). Enhancing Visual Perception of Sports Quality in Rhythmic Gymnastics Routine by Increasing Congruence between Music and Movement. International Journal of Human Movement and Sports Sciences, 10(3), 404 - 416. DOI: 10.13189/saj.2022.100306. Copyright©2022 by authors, all rights reserved. Authors agree that this article remains permanently open access under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 International License Abstract The use of music in sports routines that involve choreography is inevitable, and the appropriateness between the two is taken into account for awarding points in competitions. In dance, theatre, or in firm music, the use of music in choreography displays the subjectivity of interpretation to a certain extent due to preferences, background of audience, coach, and composer. However, more scientific and fundamental aspects shared between music and movement can provide a better perception of a particular routine. This study reports an experiment on a rhythmic gymnastics routine to investigate whether an increased congruence between music and movement enhances the perception of sports quality from a musical perspective. In the experiment, the original music accompaniment was changed with a new composition to increase the congruence between music and movement using six parameters including tempo, rhythm, phrasing, accent, direction, and dynamic. Fifty-two undergraduate music majors evaluated two videos of the same routine in a questionnaire regarding the qualities of the performance. Apart from motivation, the results show that the sports qualities with the new accompaniment were significantly perceived better than the original version. Keywords Perceived Congruence, Rhythmic Gymnastics, Music and Movement, Choreomusical, Music and Sports 1. Introduction The contribution of music in improving athletic performances from a psychological, psychophysical, and ergogenic perspective has been examined in many studies and has received significant attention [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]. These studies look into various ergogenic effects, such as stamina, motivation, power, endurance, strength, and many others. The types of sports that these studies involved mostly deal with repetitive movements, such as running, cycling, bench press, anaerobic or aerobic exercises, etc. Although music and sports are two different disciplines, certain fundamental parameters are evident in both, such as speed, tempo, rhythm, and intensity [6, 7, 8]. These parameters allow interaction and association between the two fields and therefore encourage various studies in many areas of research. From another perspective, the use of music in sports routines raises more questions as not only the subjectivity of interpretation and preferences, but the combination of the two fields is a great realm for research. Sports routines