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PSY 365 Lecture 17
Expertise in Acting and Dance
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| Ability Predictors?: Zabelina et al. (2022) looked at CAQ scores in Dance, drama, and many other areas | Both performance domains, but they look different |
| Konstantine Stanislavski | Russian actor-director-theorist, invented method acting -Many acting schools are based on method acting which involves determining a character's "spine" and motive at each moment (Noice, 1995) |
| Orazio Costa's "Mimic" Approach: | practice copying facial expressions and movements to capture emotions |
| "Theater games" approach | teach acting skills indirectly -Ex: "gibberish"- convey desires in nonsense strings of gibberish via inflection, intonation, and expression |
| Masks | convey character without facial expressions |
| Oliver and Ericsson (1996): tested professional Shakespearean actors' memory | actors could retrieve any line given any unique word from the line -faster when they knew which role it was from |
| Schmidt et al. (1985): tested actors' memory for Sartre's No Exit after 5 mth. delay | recalled 85% of lines perfectly -errors were mostly paraphrases the preserved meaning |
| Motive and Memory: Noice (1992): | actors start by understanding motives or ideas behind lines and use these to "hook" lines to |
| Motive and Memory: Noice and Noice (1994, 1996): had actors "think aloud" while learning lines | found they were almost always trying to extract characters'' motives from the written text -compare to novices, who had almost no thoughts about why characters were doing what they did |
| Active Experiencing (Noice and Noice, 1997) | once the material is analyzed, you need to practice performing it |
| Active Experiencing | doing whatever the character is doing while experiencing the "mental life" of the character -basically, this is practicing the motor movements, feelings, and thoughts of the character |
| Enactment Effect | people show better memory for something they do than things they read (Engelkamp and Krumnacker, 1980) -Ex: "throw a ball" |
| Nonliteral Enactment Effect | actors use even irrelevant actions to help them recall |
| Nonliteral Enactment Effect (Noice, Noice and Kennedy, 2000): 6 actors recalled a play from 5 mths. ago either sitting down or moving on stage | recalled more when they moved (85% vs. 71%) |
| Active Experiencing and Novice Memory?: Scott e al. (2001): 91 college students read same long solo speech twice from McDonough's play Addict -Group 1: answer ? about chracter, Group 2: discuss character, Group 3: improvise a scene | Results: Finally tested memory for the role: -Group 1: 78% correct -Group 2: 70% correct -Group 3: 85% correct |
| Detecting Emotions: Conson et al. (2013): showed emotional facial expressions to professional Stanislawski-trained actors, Mimic-method trained actors, and non-actors -saw 60 photos, had to indicate the emotion seen: anger, surprise, disgust, fear etc. | Results: Mimic method was right 82% of the time vs. 74% for control and Stanislawski -suggests specific expertise effect based on type of training -if you learn to mimic facial expressions to train, you learn to identify them |
| Goldstein and Winner (2012) studied 26 method acting students after 1 yr. of HS acting vs. 22 students receiving other arts training (music, visual art) -reviewed a video of a woman who was asked to indicate any thoughts she recalled having in the video | Results: viewers had to try to guess what those were from the video alone -Before training: accuracy was similar, though acting students were slightly better -After a yr. actors were much better than non-actors at empathic accuracy |
| Differences: Stage and Screen: Baudy (2002) points out stage usually uses well-known pieces/ fidelity to original text is key | New films/ shows are less wedded to the script allowing more improvisation -Screen productions often edited afterwards in post-production, may shoot the same scene many times or out of order |
| Dumas et al. (2020): Traits: compared n=104 professional actors, n=100 acting majors, and n=92 non-actors on many traits | Divergent Thinking: pros > others Openness: pros = majors >others Extraversion: pros= majors > others Conscientiousness: others > pros= majors Neuroticism: pros > majors > others, especially on subpart volatility- " I get irritated easily" type items |
| Some Unknowns That Need Testing | Some say narcissim trains might be good for actors (Friedlander, 2025) -Trait rumination might be bad, maybe? |
| Some Unknowns That Need Testing: Not trashing your fellow actors? | Dufner et al. (2015) found actors have low narcissistic rivalry: belittling others' achievements |
| Summary: Actors are better at: | portraying emotions, remembering dramatic works, sometimes detecting others' emotions or thoughts by observing them -These abilities are likely mediated by explicit practice, but could be tied to personality traits also |
| Ballet: 2 common western styles frequently taught in colleges | Ballet: highly specific form invented in Italy but formalized under Louis XIV in France (1660s) -Contemporary Dance: rejects restrictions of ballet -Ballet training starts at 7-9. 10+ yrs. required to develop balance, posture, control |
| Urenal (2005): studied practice in expert dancers around the world, via questionnaire and week of practice diary, 224 people. -Checked accuracy of self-report data for a subset of people by hand-written records from their schools and found them accurate | Results: practice up to age 17 was used to predict the type of role ballet dancers had at age 18, with more prominent roles getting a higher number. -Practice predicted it about r= .44 across all countries; within a country, it was much higher |
| Study of Breakdance Practice: Shimizu and Okada (2018) studied pro breakdancers' practicing -Found they practiced moves a bit, but most practice was about either | 1. fitting the move into a larger sequence, or 2. creatively generating new and original moves -shows they practice creativity |
| Blasing, Calvo-Merino, Cross, Jola, Honish and Stevens (2012) did a big review of evidence-supporting motor ability increase in dancers | -Better balance: like novices and worse than judo experts when eyes are closed -Better posture control: depends on sense of where their body is, not vision -Better at making exact trajectories of movement -Better at synchronizing movements |
| Memory of Dance Sequences: Experts often show exceptional memory | Chess, medical diagnosis, etc. (Ericsson and Delaney, 1999) -usually based on rapid recognition of familiar patterns |
| Memory of Dance Sequences: Starkes, Deakin, Lindley, and Crist (1987): Ballerinas?: 11 yr. old skilled, 8 novice ballet dancers -saw 8-step sequence on video, either choreographed or in random order -recall was either verbal or motor (danced it) | Results: skilled better than novices, except for unstructured |
| Memory of Modern Dance: Starkes et al. (1990): repeated the memory study with 11 yr. old modern dancers -modern dance is "unstructured" while ballet has patterns (like chess) | Results: experts always beat novices, but no advantage for structured sequences over unstructured -total memory was lower than the ballet dancers of the same age |
| Memory Skills in Dance Memory: Chunking | well-known sequences of steps are recalled as just one combination -Ex: chasse= step to the side, step together, step to the side |
| Memory Skills in Dance Memory: Marking | small hand movements used while mentally rehearsing a dance sequence (only some do this) |
| Adams, Beaty, Delaney, Wiley and Peebles (2026) compared adult expert and novice dancers' memory for 50-step dancers -Regular ballet, "altered" ballet, and contemporary -Watched whole dance twice and tried to dance it -Review up to 3x | Results: Memory comparable to chess masters -scoring was 1+ for correct steps, 0.5+ for partial correct |
| Segmenting D.: Blasing (2015) studied professional dancers of various types, advanced amateur dancer, and sports science students, watched a long modern dance piece -watched 20x and had to indicated whether they thought a part of a "dance phrase" ended | Results: Experts found about 8 boundaries, compared to novices' 14 and advanced amateurs' 12, suggesting experts see bigger units -evidence for chunking |
| Learning to Feel in Dance: Christense, Gomila, Gaigg, Sivarajah and Calvo-Merino (2016) compared professional ballet dancers to students with no dance experience, all women -watched 96, 5-6 sec. ballet video clips -played forward or backward | Dependent Measures: people rated own affect 0-100 (sad to happy) after each clip -Recorded GSR (a measure of arousal, like in polygraphs) |
| Summary: Acting and Dance | Acting-memory, method acting, practice types -Dance: memory advantages depend on type of dance and training, but they're as good as chess maters, Russians practice the most, practice at dance makes real dances feel more emotional |
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