Does Bodily Awareness Interfere with Highly Skilled Movement?

Abstract

It is widely thought that focusing on highly skilled movements while performing them hinders their execution. Once you have developed the ability to tee off in golf, play an arpeggio on the piano, or perform a pirouette in ballet, attention to what your body is doing is thought to lead to inaccuracies, blunders, and sometimes even utter paralysis. Here I re-examine this view and argue that it lacks support when taken as a general thesis. Although bodily awareness may often interfere with well-developed rote skills, like climbing stairs, I suggest that it is typically not detrimental to the skills of expert athletes, performing artists, and other individuals who endeavor to achieve excellence. Along the way, I present a critical analysis of some philosophical theories and behavioral studies on the relationship between attention and bodily movement, an explanation of why attention may be beneficial at the highest level of performance and an error theory that explains why many have thought the contrary. Though tentative, I present my view as a challenge to the widespread starting assumption in research on highly skilled movement that at the pinnacle of skill attention to one's movement is detrimental.

Notes

1. The “Ten-Year Rule” was first formulated by Bryan and Harter (1899). Chase and Simon (1973) apply it to chess. Ericsson et al. (1993) show that it extends to music composition, sports, science and the visual arts.

2. My argument can thus be thought of as an exercise both in what Shusterman (2008) refers to as “analytic somaesthetics” and “pragmatic somaesthetics”.

3. Some philosophers claim that “perception is transparent”, that is, that when we try to focus on the sensation itself we end up focusing on the object of sensation, e.g., the piano keys, so that this latter form of bodily awareness does not exist (see, for example, Harman, 1990). I am neither defending nor refuting the existence of this purported form of sensory awareness, but merely noting that the Maxim is sometimes formulated in terms of it.

4. Some think that although we can be conscious of proprioceptive input, we are only conscious of it when the motor command fails to match the proprioceptive input (so that when all is going well, there is no sensory aspect to proprioception). For example, according to Anthony Marcel, “awareness of a voluntary action appears to derive from a stage later than intention but earlier than movement itself” (Marcel, 2002, p. 71). And Patrick Haggard claims “awareness of movement appears to be less related to the actual motor production than to preparatory process” (Haggard, 2004, p. 121). See also Hamilton (2005) who argues against thinking of proprioception as a sense and as providing information of which we are ever conscious. I am going to merely assume that proprioception is a sense, which is sometimes conscious and which plays an important role in movement awareness. What might be called, “efferent awareness,” also exists, but can be classified either as a form of sensory bodily awareness (if there is a sensory element to it) or cognitive bodily awareness.

5. Wittgenstein (1967) also claims, “one knows the positions of one's limbs and their movements … [with] no local sign about the sensation” (p. 483).

6. The basis of this information may be visual or proprioceptive or both, but the key factor that makes it cognitive bodily awareness is that thought about the body is involved.

7. See Dreyfus (2005, 2007a, 2007b). Heinrich von Kleist also expresses this idea in his enchanting essay “On the Marionette Theatre” (1810). As Kleist puts it, “[grace] appears to best advantage in that human body structure that has no consciousness at all—or has infinite consciousness—that is, in the mechanical puppet, or in the God” (p. 26).

8. For further expressions of the Maxim in the psychology literature see, for example, Beilock (2007), Schmidt and Lee (1999), Schneider and Shiffrin (1977), Chase and Simon (1973), and Bryan and Harter (1899).

9. For the Dreyfus model applied to the practice of nursing see Benner (1984).

10. Kant, perhaps unsurprisingly, has even more draconian views on the detrimental effects of bodily awareness, not so much with respect to its effects on movement, but with respect to its interference with what he takes to be higher cognitive pursuits. Although Kant, arguably, maintains that reference to the body is necessary for understanding space, actually focusing on one's body, he tells us, can do us no good. For example, in Anthropology From a Pragmatic Point of View, he argues that to focus inward on one's body “is already a disease of the mind (hypochondria) or will lead to such a disease and ultimately to the madhouse”; such focus, he tells us, “distracts the mind's activity from considering other things and is harmful to the head” (p. 17).

11. Shusterman also speculates that the reason why James uncharacteristically advocates a relaxed spontaneous lifestyle, which seems to run contrary to his characteristic advocacy of “the strenuous mood” and “living hard”, is that the essay originated as a talk for women's colleges and James was maintaining a double standard for men and women (p. 435).

12. Steve Blass made his Major League Baseball debut in 1964, and upheld a very strong strikeout record until the 1972 season when his pitching suddenly and inexplicably deteriorated. His game never recovered, and he retired from baseball in 1975. The expression “Steve Blass disease” has subsequently been used to refer to a major inexplicable change in a player's skill level.

13. “Knoblauch's throwing troubles may force him to play left field”, in: The Daily Texan, (The Associated Press). Published: Friday, August 6, 2004; Updated: Friday, January 9, 2009.

14. This last point resonates with McDowell's (2007) criticism of Dreyfus' use of the Knoblauch example, which Dreyfus (2007b, p. 377) concedes.

15. In conversation, Fall 2005.

16. In conversation, Summer 2005.

17. In conversation, Fall 2006.

18. Brown et al. (2006), try to get around this obstacle by performing PET scans on subjects who, while supine, perform various tango foot sequences on an inclined surface.

19. Indeed, Morgan and Pollock (1977) report that world-class marathon runners almost invariably claim that during a race they are acutely aware of their physiological condition.

20. But still, one might object, Woods' experience is at least consistent with the Maxim since in changing his swing, Woods became a novice with respect to the swing. But if we were to claim this, then there might be very few experts left since most so-called experts are always striving to improve. In a sense, the expert is always a novice.

21. See also the recent discussions in the media of Micheal Phelps new technique. For example, Astrid Andersson, “Michael Phelps changes technique in bid for perfect stroke”, http://www.telegraph.co.uk, published: 12:07PM BST 23 Apr 2009. Kevin Van Valkenburg, “Different strokes for Michael Phelps”, www.latimes.com, published: 11:04 PM PDT, July 6, 2009.

22. This is indicated by the Implicit Association Test, which you can try online at https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/. Although it is controversial what, exactly, we ought to conclude about the individuals who take this and other tests which claim to measure unconscious bias (see Dawson and Arkes, 2009), such tests do seem to indicate that our unconscious reactions can be at odds with our stated conscious beliefs.

23. Also it may be that Balanchine wanted his choreography to be the star and the dancer to play second fiddle.