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 excel- lence. Along the way, I present a critical analysis of some philosophical theories and behavioral studies on the relationship between attention and bodily movement, an expla- nation 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 ditchNot 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 accom- plished 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 impli- cation 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 behav- ioral studies on the relationship between attention and bodily movement, an explanation of why attention may be beneficial at the highest level of per- formance 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 wide- spread 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 distin- guish 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 per- former should place herself in a situation which guards against even bottom- up 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 exper- tise 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 fin- gertips 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, “propriocep- tion is attentively recessive in a high degree, it takes a back seat in conscious- ness 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 move- ments of my limbs” (2003, p. 54). If this is correct, then perhaps expert ath- letes 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 anal- ogy 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 under- stand 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 “cogni- tive 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 inde- pendent. At least some forms of sensory bodily awareness involve thought, and cognitive bodily awareness will often be predicated on sensory informa- tion. 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 excep- tion, 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 whetherfocusing 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 skepti- cism 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 atten- tion 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 influ- ential 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 with- out 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 compar- ing 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 con- trolled automatically, paying attention to skill execution is typically detri- mental” (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 commenta- tors 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 intima- tions 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 know- ledge 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 percep- tion and deliberate action. The butcher is neither conscious of the move- ments 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 move- ment 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 throw- ing 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 dis- tress arises from “the imposition of . . . mind upon matter” he tells us, “rep- resents the worst, and most philistine, of mischaracterizations” (Gould, 2000). But Gould does not say this because he thinks that conscious atten- tion 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 dan- gers 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 aswell; 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 puz- zled 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 phenomenologi- cal 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 auto- matically, 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 move- ments 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 occa- sional 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 psy- chology 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 per- forming 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 condi- tion 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 per- formed without attention and so players performed better during the extra- neous 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] nei- ther 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 con- scious 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 conscious- ness 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 per- formance? 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 publi- cized decision is merely a dramatic example of the sometimes very subtle learning processes that experts are continually engaged in during both prac- tice 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 perform- ance? 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 individ- ual movements (roughly, you can’t change the artistic quality of the per- formance 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 per- form 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 per- formance 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 stereo- types more than well thought out ones.22 This is especially apparent in improvisational theater where all but experts tend to portray, say, a car- egiver 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 gym- nast’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 pro- pounded 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.

Notes1. 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 com- position, 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 sen- sory 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 con- scious 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 proprio- ception 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 move- ments . . . [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 dete- riorated. 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 physiologi- cal 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 Valken- burg, “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.

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