Dance Marking

The Cognitive Benefits of Movement Reduction: Evidence From Dance Marking

Edward C. Warburton, Margaret Wilson, Molly Lynch, and Shannon Cuykendall

http://pss.sagepub.com/content/early/2013/07/17/0956797613478824

http://people.ucsc.edu/~tedw/Welcome.html

https://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/news/releases/going-through-the-motions-improves-dance-performance.html
If a Memory Expert Ran a Dance Rehearsal - Michael Britt
The Psych Files: http://www.ThePsychFiles.com

“Mark” the dance before physically doing it and of course encourage dancers to mark the dance when they’re at work, at home, etc.
“distributed practice” - space out dance rehearsals (which is usually done anyway)
Retrieval Practice - “test” the dancers verbally on what steps the dance routine consists of just before they are asked to actually dance it.
Create “chunks” out of individual movements - and give those chunks names (ex: the “Buffalo” step, the “Maxie Ford”, “tables”, “Grease”)
Interleaving - practice one dance, then practice a different one, then go back and practice the first one again.

Key Concepts
“…the more a person attempts to learn in a shorter amount of time, the more difficult it is to process that information in working memory.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_load

Study Hypothesis: “…the cognitive-load hypothesis predicts better performance when part of the rehearsal time is spent marking than when the performance is rehearsed full out.”

- Paired samples t-test were used
- Subjects performed the correct movement 94.4% of the time in the marked condition and 95.6% of the time in the danced condition, t(37) = 0.41, p = .68. Type of rehearsal did not affect the accuracy rate
- On movement qualities (Movement qualities were defined according to Laban movement analysis (Laban, 1947)): “Performance in the marked condition was better than in the danced condition (87.6% vs. 74.9%)

*”We demonstrated that marking confers processing benefits that result in better subsequent performance.”
“These results contribute to the nascent field of the cognitive neuroscience of dance.”
“Although dancers, teachers, and choreographers intuitively know that marking during some portions of the rehearsal process is beneficial, the accepted explanation is that it saves energy. Our results suggest that dancers have in fact evolved a strategy that benefits them cognitively by relieving cognitive load and supporting more efficient encoding and consolidation.”
“The large effect sizes found here suggest that marking is of practical significance and can make a material difference in a dancer’s performance, a finding that could affect dance pedagogy. Far from being a necessary evil in the rehearsal process, marking could be strategically used by teachers and choreographers…”

…38 advanced ballet students in the Department of Dance at the University of California, Irvine, who had a mean of 14.4 years of ballet training…

Design
- within-subjects
- Counter-balanced
- matched on age, gender and ballet training
Dance
- two 64-count ballet sequences (routines A and B) consisting of 8 movements
- Same music
Monday

All groups were taught the two routines

Wednesday
- Students assigned to groups and sent to separate rooms
- Room 1: practice routine A full out and “mark” routine B
- Room 2: practice routine B full out and mark routine A
Friday
- Both groups rehearse both routines full out
- Students perform the dance alone
- Dances were filmed
Scoring (dependent variables)
- two judges - 1) a trained dancer blind to the hypothesis - 2) an author blind to group assignment
- a global judegement on whether the “desired quality” was performed successfully (0 or 1 for a total possible of 16 points)
- an analytical score - “whether each quality had the appropriate features of weight, time and spatial intention..” (like figure skating)
- inter-rater reliability of 97%

“The problem with within-subjects designs is that they are subject to carryover effects or order effects. This is when having been tested under one condition affects how participants behave in another condition. There are many different kinds of carryover effects. Here are a few of the most important.
1. Practice Effects – Occur when subjects get better at the task over time because of practice, so that they perform best in the later conditions.
2. Fatigue Effects – Occur when subjects get worse at the task over time because of fatigue. They might even quit trying and just “go through the motions.” http://psych.csufresno.edu/price/psych144/counterbalancing.html

“Marking involves enacting the sequence of movements with curtailed size and energy by diminishing the size of steps, height of jumps and leaps, and extension of limbs. The dancer often does not leave the floor and may even substitute hand gestures for certain steps.”

Introduction