Does Bodily Awareness Interfere
with Highly Skilled Movement?—
Draft [please quote from the published version, 2010
Inquiry53 (2):105 – 122. ]
BARBARA MONTERO
The City University of New York, USA
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.
A centipede was happy quite, until a toad in fun
Said, “Pray, which leg comes after which?”
This raised his doubts to such a pitch
He fell distracted in the ditch
Not knowing how to run.
—Mrs. Edmund Craster (1871)
Both in the ivory tower and on the football field, 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 your bodily movement is thought to lead to inaccuracies,
blunders, and some- times even utter paralysis. At the pinnacle of
achievement, such skills, it is urged, should proceed without
conscious interference. In the oft-spoken words of the great
choreographer George Balanchine, “don’t think, dear; just do”.
Let me call the view that bodily awareness tends to hinder highly accomplished bodily skills “the Maxim”. I shall argue that, despite its popularity,
the Maxim, when taken as a general thesis, lacks support. Although bodily
awareness may often interfere with well-developed rote skills, like climbing
stairs, I shall suggest that it is typically not detrimental to the skills of expert
athletes, performing artists, and other individuals who endeavor to achieve
excellence and whose skills usually conform to the ten-year rule, which states
that the journey from novice to professional typically takes ten years of
intensive practice.1
The Maxim, though descriptive—it tells us that movement is disrupted
when you turn your attention towards it—clearly has the prescriptive implication that you ought not to focus on your own bodily movement during
performance. I also question the wisdom of such advice.2
I arrive at my skepticism about the Maxim by considering two admittedly
fallible tools: first person reports and philosophical reasoning. The former
serves primarily to counter opposing first person reports supporting the
Maxim. The latter produces a critical analysis of some of the current behavioral studies on the relationship between attention and bodily movement, an
explanation of why attention may be beneficial at the highest level of performance as well as an error theory that explains why many have accepted
the Maxim. 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.
I. What type of bodily awareness is at issue in the Maxim?
In the literature and the lore, one finds injunctions against various kinds of
bodily awareness, or attention. We are instructed: “do not focus on what you
are doing”, “don’t think about it, just let it happen”, and “pay attention to the
end result, not the process”. What, in such cases, are we being warned not
to do?
Cognitive scientists distinguish “top-down” endogenous attention, which
you employ, for example, when you search for a matching sock in a pile of
variously patterned black socks, from “bottom-up” exogenous attention,
which arises, for example, when the loud crash in the kitchen alerts you to
the fact that someone just dropped your crystal wine glass. They also distinguish focal from peripheral attention: when you look at your watch, your
focal attention is on the watch, but your peripheral attention may provide
information about your hand, arm, and so forth. When advocates of the
Maxim claim that, say, an expert rock climber should not be aware of the
movements of her limbs as she scales the crag, such awareness typically
means top-down, focal attention, as that is what a person has direct control
over. However, one sometimes hears advice, such as the advice to keep your
mind on other matters when performing, that suggest that an athlete or performer should place herself in a situation which guards against even bottomup attentional interference by one’s own bodily movements. Peripheral
attention, however, is usually not inveighed against, except, perhaps, by
those such as Hubert Dreyfus (1986, 2005, 2007a, 2007b), who view expertise as such an automatic process that it does not involve the mind at all
(assuming that peripheral attention is a mental process).
I also distinguish “sensory bodily awareness”, from “cognitive bodily
awareness”. Sensory bodily awareness is awareness of your body through
your senses, either because your senses are (top-down) directed at your
body, such as when you visually focus on your hands grasping the golf club,
or because the sensory experience itself captures your attention (bottom-up),
such as when you become aware of an unusual tactile sensation in your fingertips when hitting a chipped piano key.3
Of particular significance to the Maxim is our sense of proprioception,
which provides information, via receptors in the joints, tendons, ligaments,
muscles and skin, about the positions and movements of our own bodies. 4 A
number of philosophers claim that we are rarely aware of proprioceptive
information. For example, according to Brian O’Shaughnessy, “proprioception is attentively recessive in a high degree, it takes a back seat in consciousness almost all of the time” (1998, p. 175). And Gallagher tells us, “when I
am engaged in the world, I tend not to notice my posture or specific movements of my limbs” (2003, p. 54). If this is correct, then perhaps expert athletes and performing artists are not attending to proprioceptive input.
I question, however, whether proprioception is typically more recessive
than any of our other senses. While working at your computer, your attention is
typically not on your posture, but neither is it on any sensory information;
rather it is on the content of what you may be writing or reading. So
O’Shaughnessy and Gallagher may not be correct, if they mean to suggest
that proprioception is more recessive than our other senses. Nonetheless,
proprioception (along with all other sensory information), may be typically
recessive. Yet, as I shall argue, the perception of the expert is often not typical.
There is also a rather knotty debate in the philosophy literature about
whether proprioception is perceptual at all. According to Elizabeth Anscombe,
we know the positions of our limbs without observation; nothing shows us,
she tells us, the positions of our limbs.5 Anscombe explains this by an analogy to the knowledge possessed by the director of a building project, who
may know what a finished building will look like, not because she has
observed it, but because she has designed it. Others, however, such as Hannah
Pickard (2004), have argued that proprioception (though she does not use
this term) is a form of perception. As Pickard, in defense of what she calls
her “naïve proposal”, says, “just as we perceive the world through the five
senses, we perceive our own bodies ‘from the inside’” (p. 210).
It seems that when proponents of the Maxim warn against proprioceptive
bodily awareness, they have in mind sensory knowledge from the inside. But
Anscome’s “director’s knowledge” comes under fire as well, if we understand it as knowledge of our movement based on consciously directing our
bodies to move.
In contrast to sensory proprioception and other forms of sensory bodily
awareness, the Maxim is sometimes formulated in terms of what I call “cognitive bodily awareness” which encompasses various ways of thinking about
your body, such as thinking about what you are doing, what you are going to
do, or what you are supposed to do. For example, I am aware of my body
when I think about the awkward position my legs are in, cramped behind the
seat in front of me on the bus.6 Or I am aware of my body when I pick up a
heavy box because as I am doing so I tell myself: “bend from the knees and not
the back, keep the elbows relaxed”, and so forth. Although some of these forms
of cognitive bodily awareness involve deliberation, not all do. For example, in
thinking about what you should do in order to make the putt, you may be
deliberating over possibilities or simply telling yourself: “keep the torso stable”.
Although proponents of the Maxim tend to discredit the expert’s use of
cognitive more than sensory bodily awareness, both come under attack.
Moreover, cognitive and sensory bodily awareness are not entirely independent. At least some forms of sensory bodily awareness involve thought,
and cognitive bodily awareness will often be predicated on sensory information. As I turn my attention to the feeling of my fingers moving over the
keys, I am also thinking about their movements. My thought that my arm is
bent is arrived at in part because of the sensory information I receive from
my arm, and when deliberating over how to move, I make a decision based,
in part, on sensory information about how I just moved.
Finally, most think that it is conscious awareness that has a detrimental
effect on expert action. The mind may be guiding your tennis serve, but if the
conscious mind tried to take over, havoc, it is thought, occurs. The exception, again, are those who see expert action as “nonminded”. On their view,
expertise does not involve cognitive awareness of even an unconscious kind.7
I question whether any of the types of awareness commonly touted as
being detrimental to performance are typically detrimental. Nonetheless, at
any one time much of an expert’s actions, the movements of the high-diver’s
little toe as she pushes off, do proceed automatically. I leave it open whether
focusing on these aspects of action are inimical to peak performance.
Does “expert level performance” refer to actions we might all be thought
to be experts at, like crossing a busy intersection, or merely to the actions of
recognized experts, such as professional athletes, artists, physicians, and so
forth? I shall take the Maxim to cover both notions of expertise. My skepticism arises, however, in relation to the effects of attention on professional
level performance.
We can now state the Maxim as follows:
The Maxim: Attention to bodily movement tends to interfere with
expert level performance.
It can be presented in a variety of ways, depending on which form of attention is at issue. For example, the Maximfs states that focal sensory attention
tends to interfere with expert level performance; the Maximd states that
deliberating over what you should do interferes with expert performance. I
shall argue there is little reason to think that most of the types of attention
that are typically thought to interfere with expert performance actually do
interfere with expert performance. However, I leave it open whether a more
restricted version of the Maxim is correct:
The Restricted Maxim: Attention to highly automatized, everyday
skills tends to interfere with performance of these skills
II. Avowals of the Maxim
The Maxim is often assumed in accounts of complex skill acquisition in the
psychology literature, such as that of Fitts and Posner’s (1967) highly influential three-stage model.8 In the first phase, what they dub “the cognitive
phase”, one aims at understanding and intellectualizing the task and what it
demands. During this phase of skill learning, they say,
it is usually necessary to attend to cues, events, and responses that later
go unnoticed. In learning a dance step, one attends to kinesthetic and
visual information about the feet, information which is later ignored.
(p. 12)
During the second phase, the associative phase, one acquires some mastery
over the movement. And in the final, or “autonomous” phase, one moves
without conscious focus on the movement. At this level, as they explain it,
“if the attention of a golfer is called to his muscle movements before an
important putt, he may find it unusually difficult to attain his natural swing”
(p. 15). On this model, experts focus neither cognitively nor sensorially on
their bodily movement. Expert dancers, they tell us, “ignore kinesthetic
information and visual information about their movements”, and if an
expert golfer thinks about, say, stabilizing her torso muscles during a swing,
things may go awry (p. 16).
The Maxim is also a guiding assumption in the similarly highly influential
model of skill acquisition proposed by Hubert Dreyfus and Stuart Dreyfus
(1988, 2004). They argue that the highest level of skill involves action without awareness:
The expert driver, generally without any attention, not only knows by
feel and familiarity when an action such as slowing down is required;
he knows how to perform the action without calculating and comparing alternatives. He shifts gears when appropriate with no awareness of
his acts. On the off ramp his foot simply lifts off the accelerator. What
must be done, simply is done.9 (2004, p. 253)
Dreyfus and Dreyfus, it seems, are primarily concerned with cognitive
awareness. Beginners, according to Dreyfus and Dreyfus, “make judgments
using strict rules and features, but with talent and a great deal of involved
experience, the beginner develops into an expert who sees intuitively what to
do without applying rules and making judgments at all” (2004, p. 253). In
accord with Balanchine’s dictum, the expert doesn’t think, but just does
what needs to be done.
Summing up the received view on this final stage of skill acquisition,
Gabriele Wulf tells us, “there is little disagreement that once an individual
has reached the autonomous stage, in which movements are usually controlled automatically, paying attention to skill execution is typically detrimental” (2007, p. 6).
In the world of sports, the Maxim is ubiquitous. In baseball, for example,
coaches may tell proficient batters to hum a tune while batting so as to not think
about what they are doing. When a player is off you may hear sports commentators say “he’s focusing too much on what he’s doing”, “she needs to just let it
happen”, “he’s overthinking”, and so forth. The case of the New York Yankee’s
former second baseman Chuck Knoblauch is illustrative. When he developed
throwing problems—sometimes being barely able to toss the ball, other times
throwing it outrageously far out of bounds—it was often claimed, as Stephen
Jay Gould put it summing up the popular press’s analysis of the situation, that
that “his conscious brain has intruded upon a bodily skill that must be honed by
practice into a purely automatic and virtually infallible reflex” (2000).
In addition to these contemporary affirmations of the Maxim, there is a
long and distinguished history of thinkers that supported it. We find intimations of it, for example, in The Principles of Psychology where William James
(1890/1983) champions leaving as much of our daily life “to the effortless
custody of automatism” (p. 126). “We fail of accuracy and certainty in our
attainment of the end” he tells us, “whenever we are preoccupied with . . .
consciousness of the bodily means” (p. 1128). Or as one of the founders of
neuroscience, Charles Sherrington (1906/1949), put it, “our minds are not
concerned with the act but with the aim”.10
There is also the Taoist tradition that advises “non-action” or “effortless
action”. In the Zhuangzi, this idea is illustrated by the final stage of knowledge in the story of a butcher:
When I first began cutting up oxen, I did not see anything but oxen.
Three years later, I couldn’t see the whole ox. And now, I encounter
them with spirit and don’t look with my eyes. Sensible knowledge
stops and spiritual desires proceed. (Ivanhoe and van Norden, 2005,
p. 225)
These three stages are analogous to Fitts and Posner’s three stages of skill
acquisition. In the first stage the butcher needs to think about where to draw
his knife; three years later he develops a degree of mastery and the divisions
become apparent to him; and in the final stage, the oxen are encountered
with spirit, where the notion of spirit is opposed to conscious visual perception and deliberate action. The butcher is neither conscious of the movements of his hand holding the knife nor trying to move in any particular
way; he just moves unconsciously and effortlessly. In accord with both the
Fitts and Posner and the Dreyfus and Dreyfus models, an expert’s movement is not consciously guided but intuitive; it is movement not by the self,
but, as it’s put in the Zhuangzi, “by what is inherently so” (Ivanhoe and van
Norden, 2005, p. 225).
Clearly, the Maxim is appealing and popular. Even Stephen J. Gould, in
his interesting editorial criticizing the press coverage of Knoblauch’s throwing problems indirectly supports it. Gould argues that in using pat phrases
about keeping consciousness out of the way, we undervalue the mental and
intellectual aspect of athletic achievement. The claim that Knoblauch’s distress arises from “the imposition of . . . mind upon matter” he tells us, “represents the worst, and most philistine, of mischaracterizations” (Gould,
2000). But Gould does not say this because he thinks that conscious attention to movement is compatible with highly skilled peak performance; that
is, he doesn’t say this because he thinks that the Maxim is false. Rather he
thinks that for Knoblauch an unwanted, conscious mentality is interfering
with a wanted unconscious mentality. For top-level athletic performance,
unconscious mentality, as Gould sees it, is a laudable intellectual endeavor
and not merely a brute bodily movement. As he describes it, “we encounter
mentality in either case, not body against mind” (Gould, 2000). I agree that
we should not undervalue unconscious intelligence in athletic performance.
However, as I shall argue, I think that consciousness of one’s highly skilled
movements should not be undervalued either.
Richard Shusterman, in a thoughtful paper on James’ views of the dangers of somatic introspection, comes close to denying the Maxim. He points
out that in the “The Gospel of Relaxation” James advises us to counter our
“bad habits” of over-contracting our muscles, but, as Shusterman says, it is
difficult to know how to do this unless one is aware of the over-contraction
in the first place (Shusterman, 2005). “Trust your spontaneity”, James tells
us; but as Shusterman emphasizes, if we continue to act spontaneously, we
would only reinforce the bad habits that James advises us to counter (p. 4344).11
I agree with Shusterman that countering incorrect ways of movement
often requires bodily awareness and would like to extend this to the expert as
well; the expert, I shall argue, is continually improving.
III. Steve Blass disease and some anecdotes
Dreyfus (2007a) seems to think that Knoblauch’s throwing problems support
the Maxim. But I question whether attention is the culprit for Knoblauch.
From what I gather in reading the media coverage on this, neither Knoblauch
nor any of the other players who have been struck with what is called, “Steve
Blass disease”, claim that the cause of their throwing problems is related to
their focusing on what they are doing.12 Rather, they say that they don’t
know why they can’t throw and, indeed, Knoblauch has criticized the
media’s claim to understand the cause of his condition.13 True enough, as
Dreyfus points out, one could sometimes see Knoblauch looking in a puzzled way at his gloved hand, but that doesn’t mean that his problem was
caused by thinking about how he ought to throw since it might very well be
that he is puzzling over his hand because he can’t throw the ball properly.
One might argue that these players are not able to identify the fact that
their thinking about what they are doing is interfering with their actions,
though it is not clear how this would be consistent with his phenomenological approach to problems. But even if players like Knoblauch are missing the
cause of their troubles, these situations would only support the restricted
Maxim, that is, the view that attention is detrimental to rote skills since
Steve Blass disease seems to afflict only easy throws.14
Apart from Dreyfus’s discussion of Knoblauch, Dreyfus and Dreyfus as
well as Fitts and Posner tend to rely on first person reports to support the
Maxim. Introspection may be unreliable and highly influenced by what you
think you should find. However, if upon introspection most experts claimed
that bodily awareness hindered their performance, this would be prima facie
support that the Maxim, as applied to expert performance, is correct.
But here are some cases that cast doubt on this prima facie support. A
classical guitarist in New York City, Tobias Schaeffer, claims that when he
was younger, despite the most assiduous practice, he used to fumble and
sometimes blank out during performances.15 It seemed to him that although
he would rehearse to the point where he could play a piece more or less automatically, during performance he would end up, as he described it, “thinking
about what I was doing”. In discussing this problem with his instructor, she
advised him to think about his movements during both performance and
practice. At first this slowed down his playing, but eventually he was able to
direct his attention to his movements and think about what he was doing
while playing in tempo. And by maintaining this sort of attention during
performance, his playing improved dramatically.
Professional dancers at the highest level also often claim to focus on their
movement while performing; as Britt Juleen, a dancer with Dutch National
Ballet put it, in performing she aims, “to be totally immersed the feeling of
my body moving”.16 Being immersed in the feeling of her body moving is a
form of proprioceptive sensory bodily awareness. She is feeling, for example,
her arms lifting, her upper back arched, her fingers extended. Most likely,
she is also cognitively aware of her body, but she is primarily describing a
sensory phenomenon. Contrary to what Fitts and Posner claim, she is not
ignoring kinesthetic information about her body.
Of course, no dancer can focus on every detail, but sometimes the movements of her fingers, for example, are just what a dancer wants to play with
during a performance. What might be important, however, as Schaeffer’s
example illustrates, is that the focus in practice and performance match up.
Schaeffer’s focus is more cognitively laden than Juleen’s; it is the type that
Fitts and Posner warn against when they say,
There is a good deal of similarity between highly practiced skills and
reflexes. Both seem to run off without much verbalization or conscious
content. In fact, overt verbalization may interfere with a highly
developed skill. (p. 15)
Dreyfus and Dreyfus warn against this too when they tell us that the expert,
as opposed to someone who is merely proficient, no longer needs “to think
about what to do” (2004, p. 253). But Schaeffer’s testimony contradicts this:
for him, skillful playing involves extensive conscious thought about what to
do and when to do it.
Expert athletes seem to engage in conscious thought as well. According to
one swim coach and former competitive swimmer, she focuses on the position
of her hand as it enters the water, when to begin her flip-turn, when to take
the last breath before going into the turn, rotating quickly through the turn
and so forth.17 And, arguably, Olympic gold medallist swimmer Michael
Phelps made a conscious decision to go against conventional swimming
wisdom and take that extra min-stroke enabling him to win the 100-meter
butterfly by .01 of a second.
Dancers sometimes even think about what they are doing aloud. For
example, to keep one’s mind and body on the task, during rehearsal or even
a performance a dancer might whisper something like, “stretch-lift-whoosh”
(the “whoosh” representing the sort of feeling that he is trying to capture in
the movement). Some dancers count certain parts of the music aloud as a
way of ensuring that their bodies are moving at the right time. Even an occasional reprimand, such as “shoulders down”, is not necessarily out of place.
IV. Empirical support for the Maxim
The Maxim is also thought to garner empirical support from behavioral psychology and neurology. The neurological data, however, is rather limited.
As sophisticated as our neural imaging devices may be, we still cannot scan a
high-diver mid-air or a ballet dancer on stage.18 There are neurological studies
on the effects of bodily awareness on more stationary skills, such as tying
knots, which have been interpreted as supporting the Maxim. For example,
both Tracy et al. (2003) who observed differences in brain activation before
and after two weeks of practice tying a complicated knot and Puttemans et al.
(2005) who looked at differences before and after eight days of practice performing a bimanual co-ordinated wrist movement conclude that one possible
interpretation of the data is that practice leads to reduced cognitive demands.
But as there is much uncertainty as to what areas of the brain underlie
awareness, the conclusions drawn are speculative. Moreover, since they only
observed improvement over a short period, even if correct, they would seem
to only support the Maxim as applied to proficient performance rather than
expertise. Since there is no need to focus on your movements when you are
doing something utterly predictable and you are competent and have no
interest in improving, the subjects of theses studies did not need to be aware
of an unexpected turn of events and were not particularly motivated to
achieve excellence as opposed to mere competence. Thus, it is reasonable to
think that as they developed the skills, they turned their focus elsewhere.
There are, however, a number of interesting behavioral studies that are
thought to show that the maxim applies not just to bored subjects tying
knots, but also to experts who are motivated to achieve excellence. Most of
these studies, such as those by Robert Gray (2004), Beilock et al. (2004,
2002), Ford, Hodges, and Williams (2005), and Leavitt (1979) take expert
athletes and have them perform a skill while either directing their attention
to a specific aspect of their movement or while engaging in an extraneous
task. And the result is that experts perform worse in the skill-focused condition than in the extraneous task condition. Moreover, Beilock (2004) and
Robert Gray (2004) found that the skill-focused condition produced worse
results than having the experts perform their skill without an additional task
(single-task condition). According to Wulf (2007) “these findings clearly
show that if experienced individuals direct their attention to the details of
skill execution, the result is almost certainly a decrement in performance”
(p. 23).
It seems to me that the findings are not as clear as Wulf indicates. During
the skill focused condition experts were not simply told to attend to their
movements but were given instructions to focus on a particular aspect of
their movement. For example, during the skill-focused condition Gray
(2004) had expert baseball payers indicate whether their bats were moving
upward or downward by saying either “up” or “down” at the sound of a tone,
resulting, it would seem, both in heightened sensory and cognitive attention
to their movement. But the fact that a request to focus on some particular
aspect of movement interferes with movement does not mean that attention
to movement generally interferes with expert skill. Rather, it may be that the
skill-focused condition, more so than the extraneous task condition (where
the players were asked to identify whether the sound of a tone was either
high or low), interfered with certain movements that are typically best performed without attention and so players performed better during the extraneous task condition. Indeed, I would understand the results as showing that
since the subjects performed best of all during the single-task condition,
experts perform best when their attention is where it belongs, which may
very well be on their movements.
Another line of thought is that attention, or rather conscious attention,
would arise too late for it to be relevant to performance. This would seem to
support the idea that expert action proceeds without conscious awareness.
For example, Jeffrey Gray (2004) argues that in grand-slam tennis the speed
of the ball after a serve is so fast and the distance it needs to travel is so short
that a player must strike it back before she consciously sees the ball leave the
server’s racket (pp. 7–8). According to Gray, “consciously [the receiver] neither sees nor feels his arm move before the stroke is completed” (p. 8).
The brain, of course, receives the information about the serve, says Gray,
but given that it is commonly estimated to take about 250 milliseconds to
become conscious of an event after it has happened, this awareness cannot
be relevant to return. Gray concludes “that conscious awareness should
guide immediate behavioral reaction to them is—on the experimental
evidence—impossible” (p. 9).
The results Gray cites, however, are more controversial than he makes them
out to be since it is not clear how to determine when a person becomes conscious of an event (see Block, 2007 for discussion). Moreover, as Gray points
out himself, top players anticipate the ball’s trajectory well before it leaves the
server’s racket. According to Gray, this still does not allow time for consciousness to play a role in the game. For support he cites the science journalist John
McCrone (2000) who tells us that top players do not claim to get their clues
about the ball’s trajectory prior to the time the ball leaves the racket, but
rather seem to be conscious of the shots as they happen (Gray, 2004, p. 8).
But this would hardly seem to be rock solid experimental evidence. And even
if it were, not all aspects of expert bodily skill occur at high speeds. So even if
returning a serve in grand-slam tennis does not occur with awareness of bodily
movement, marathon running, for example, very well might.19
V. The case against the Maxim
One reason why experts should not comply with the Maxim is that the best
performing artists and athletes, and, presumably, experts in all fields, are
always striving to improve. To become a Tiger Woods one has to be driven
to achieve such heights, and once at the top, one’s drive does not simply
stop. Indeed, it may be that this desire for continuous improvement, an
attitude that in Japanese is called kaizen, more so than talent, turns a novice
into an expert (Ericsson and Smith, 1991). Yet in order for an expert to
change a habitual way of moving, it may be that attention is required.
Woods’ decision to change his swing is a striking example of kaizen.
Already the best golfer in the world, Woods saw room for improvement and
set about making it happen. It is true that while he was working on his
swing, he had a rather dismal string of games during a PGA tournament. As
he put it, becoming a better player, did not always mean winning more
games, a claim which could be interpreted as supporting the Maxim. But did
the conscious thought involved in improving his swing interfere with his performance? I do not think that there is any reason to think that it did. More
likely, what resulted in poor performance was that he was not yet achieving
his desired swing. Without attention to his new way of moving, the game
would have most likely gone much worse.20
Beilock and Carr (2004, p. 322) acknowledge that occasional attention to
performance is beneficial for an expert because she may need to improve a
skill. But while this might be seen as a rare occurrence, Woods’ highly publicized decision is merely a dramatic example of the sometimes very subtle
learning processes that experts are continually engaged in during both practice and performance.21 For most experts, the work to improve never ends.
Just as Socrates is wise because he knows that he is ignorant, it is at least in
part the ability to recognize where there is room for improvement that
allows competent athletes and artists to reach great heights.
But should experts aim to improve during an important game or performance? This may depend on how high the stakes are. When an athlete falls in
the Olympics, it results in a serious disadvantage. For dance, the artistic
quality of the whole performance, while perhaps supervening on the individual movements (roughly, you can’t change the artistic quality of the performance without changing the movements) is not reducible to the movements
(for example, an individual movement can go very wrong without marring the
artistic quality of the whole). Athletic performance might not be so irreducible.
Moreover, dancers perform the same piece over and over again which
allows for some room for trial and error. Nonetheless, it might be that to
win a gold medal or the tour de France, one must risk trying something new
(such as Michael Phelps’ extra stroke) since sometimes to win one must perform not as one has in the past, but better than ever. And taking a risk seems
to be just the opposite of “simply spontaneously [doing] what has normally
worked” (Dreyfus and Dreyfus, 2004, p. 253).
Another reason why conscious awareness during performance would seem
to be important is that in the arts, at least, it is often the case that relying on
the same approach for each performance can result in a performance without
any spark. This is probably in part because repeating the exact same performance over and over again and again, if this were possible at all, would
result in boredom. If this were all there was to it, the remedy might simply be
to find a different way to eliminate the boredom. But, to speculate a bit more
(and perhaps a bit wildly), it also may be that the glimmer of artistry one
perceives in great performers requires creativity in action, which itself often
involves attention to one’s movements.
To be sure, creative ideas on how to approach a piece sometimes arrive
unbidden. For example, some choreographic ideas do not arise out of prior
thought but seem to happen almost automatically once the music is played.
And in dancing, often one is inspired on the spot to move in a particular
way. But this does not mean that all artistry ought to be automatic. Rather,
it seems that in the arts the best performances allow observers to witness
some deliberate, conscious thought in action. (Think of the difference
between listening to someone lecture on her feet and listening to someone
read a paper. Part of the interest of the lecture is that we see someone think
in real time.) As I see it, a performance that proceeds entirely automatically
would be flat. It would be, in certain respects, like watching a machine;
although the output could be amazing, that most interesting of spectacles,
the human mind, is lacking.
A further factor may be that automatic responses tend towards stereotypes more than well thought out ones.22 This is especially apparent in
improvisational theater where all but experts tend to portray, say, a caregiver as a woman, a scientist as a man and so forth. It seems that the merely
proficient performer proceeds spontaneously while the expert thoughtfully
guides a scene. And what goes for improvisational theater would seem to go
for improvisational dance as well. Letting the body move automatically may
result in patterns of movements that lack novelty.
Finally, it seems that bodily attention is needed for online correction to
movements when something goes wrong. Bielock and Carr (2004), Dreyfus
and Dreyfus (1998), and Fitts and Posner (1967) all admit that this occurs,
but, again, rarely. They see expertise proceeding habitually without a glitch.
Yet it seems to me that although from the amateur’s point of view the gymnast’s routine may be flawless, the gymnast’s point of view presents things
otherwise.
VI. Conclusion: the error theory
I have argued that even though the Maxim has widespread appeal, there is
little reason to think it describes expert performance. Why, then, do so many
accept it?
Perhaps one reason is that it does appear to be true in a restricted sense.
Cognitive awareness does seem to interfere with our everyday skills such as
tying knots, typing, and going down stairs. As you are carrying a glass of
water, try to think about what you ought to do to prevent it from spilling.
Or think about just how you are supposed to shift from second to third gear
while driving. Movement in these situations will be awkward, at best (see
Norman and Shallice, 1986 and Perner, 2003 for discussions of why this may
be so). And it is easy to see how an evolutionary advantage could accrue to
those who could think about more important things during, say, grooming.
But for the performer on stage or the golfer on the green there is nothing
more important than the task at hand.
Another reason may be that focusing on something other than your own
movement is often useful when performing or competing, as it can help ease
excessive nervousness. However, it may be that the best performers both
keep nerves in check and the focus on how they are moving.
Beyond this, some may accept the Maxim because they accept that trying
interferes with performance. But effortless action is not the same as action
without awareness. You may be fully aware of the ease of performing.
Moreover, although trying may produce tension for some, experts, I suspect,
try their best without getting tense. Furthermore, the experience of trying is
most pronounced when you are doing your best yet still fail. Of course,
that’s a bad thing. But doing your best and succeeding is not.
But still, we have a great choreographer saying “don’t think; just do”. It
may be, however, that he just meant to discourage what is sometimes called
“overthinking”, that is, trying to understand an interpret every last detail of
a piece.23
So, people may be drawn to the Maxim because it may be correct for rote
activities and because some characteristics that are often associated with
bodily awareness may interfere with performance. Moreover, once propounded it is perpetuated because introspection here is very susceptible to
suggestion.
To take stock, I have countered anecdotal evidence for the Maxim with
anecdotal evidence against it, argued that empirical evidence for it is lacking,
presented some reasons to think bodily awareness could be beneficial, and
limned an error theory that in part explains its wide acceptance. I conclude
that there is little reason to uphold the Maxim. Indeed, bodily awareness of
expert movement should be thought of as a good thing. Or, to put it more
boldly, the unexamined body is not worth moving.
Notes
1.
2.
3.
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.
My argument can thus be thought of as an exercise both in what Shusterman (2008)
refers to as “analytic somaesthetics” and “pragmatic somaesthetics”.
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
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
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.
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.
Wittgenstein (1967) also claims, “one knows the positions of one’s limbs and their movements . . . [with] no local sign about the sensation” (p. 483).
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.
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).
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).
For the Dreyfus model applied to the practice of nursing see Benner (1984).
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).
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).
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.
“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.
This last point resonates with McDowell’s (2007) criticism of Dreyfus’ use of the Knoblauch
example, which Dreyfus (2007b, p. 377) concedes.
In conversation, Fall 2005.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
In conversation, Summer 2005.
In conversation, Fall 2006.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Also it may be that Balanchine wanted his choreography to be the star and the dancer to
play second fiddle.
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