ABSTRACT
This chapter begins by presenting an embodied and enactive account of music perception, including the body-as-constraint thesis. From the perspective of embodied music cognition, the body is not peripheral to meaning-making in musical experience, but rather constitutes a natural mediator between the sonic environment and the agent's mind. The chapter then focuses on sensorimotor synchronization (SMS) in early years by outlining what the authors describe as outcome-and process-oriented research approaches. It presents two examples of children moving freely to rhythmic stimuli, in order to illustrate a new, process-oriented approach to SMS called Ana's Game. The first example is of a 5-year-old boy who exhibited a whole-body movement pattern that involved stepping to the right with the right foot leading and then crossing the left leg behind the right one. The second example is of a 4-year-old girl, whose movement choices varied considerably for each tempo, throughout the game.
