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Dancing was something I was extremely dedicated to ever since I was three-years-old. At age eight, I started dancing competitively until I graduated high school. I did lyrical, contemporary, jazz, hip hop, ballet, pointe, and tap. After taking Kinesiology 361, I learned many concepts that were relevant to my dance training and explained a lot. I've even learned concepts I wish I knew back then that could have helped me learn and perform better. Specifically, I found Fitts and Posner's Three Stage Model, augmented feedback, transfer of learning, memory, and the Specificity of Motor Abilities Hypothesis to be especially relevant to my dancing days.

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Between August and September, I would learn all of my dances for the season. Until competition started in March, my team and I would just practice, cleaning our dance and trying to improve on our technique. Going from September to March, my ability to remember and perform the dances improved. Looking back, I went through Fitts and Posner's three stages of learning. The first stage according to Fitts and Posner is the cognitive stage. During this stage, a person relies heavily on cognitive and verbal processes, has inconsistencies in performance, makes significant improvements, and tries to come up with appropriate strategies. This is what I went through those first couple months of learning the dance. It took a lot of hard thinking and talking through the steps to get through the choreography. I had to decide whether it was easier to count the music or use the lyrics. As a group, we were very inconsistent with how well we would work together. The next few months, we went through Fitts and Posner's second stage: associative stage. During this time according to Fitts and Posner, motor patterns are established, gradual improvements occur, ability to detect errors starts to happen, and movements become more consistent. This certainly occurred in dance. Once the dances were learned, it was a gradual process to make the dances clean. Each week we would fix different parts of the dance and focus more and more on small details. Once a part was cleaned, it became part of a pattern. Additionally, since all the choreography was taught to us at this point, we were able to detect our own errors and see if timing looked off. Our performance became cleaner and more consistent in these months. By the time competition season came around, we were in Fitts and Posner's autonomous stage. In this stage, the skill becomes automatic, we are able to detect and correct errors, and there is reduced attention demands. During competition season, our dancing was cleaned entirely. Therefore, the choreography came so naturally to us. The music would play and it would take very little thinking to get through the dance. Nothing could distract us; not the audience and not anything outside the walls of the studio. Rather, we focused on the entertainment aspect at this point. We just need to make sure we put in all of our energy and used lots of facial expressions. Like the teacher, we also became experts on how the choreography should look. Therefore, we were encouraged to watch ourselves and each other in the mirror during practice and call each other out if an error was made. It became a group effort to make the dance look good, rather than our teacher telling us what to do.

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During the time when we were learning the choreography, augmented feedback was essential. Augmented feedback is information that expands upon inherent feedback and comes from an outside source. Augmented feedback can either be essential for skill acquisition, not needed for skill acquisition, enhance skill acquisition, or hinders skill learning. However, augmented feedback is essential for skill acquisition when a person does not have experience with the task or is unable to naturally obtain feedback while performing. This was the case for me when learning dances. When the choreography is first introduced to us, only the teacher has knowledge on how the dance should look and us dancers have no background on the choreography. Additionally, we would not be able to master the dances on our own. Us dancers could not be totally aware of our movement while also looking to correct our peers. We needed our instructor to gives us corrections on our performance and tell us who was doing the move correctly or incorrectly. We could not make those decisions on our own or by simply watching ourselves in the mirror. By the time competition season rolled around, we became a pretty strong team, so our instructor clearly used augmented feedback effectively. It's been found that augmented feedback is effective when the sandwich approach is used, terminal feedback is used, when there is only a brief time between skill completion and feedback, and when it isn't used too frequently. These are all methods my instructors used. For instance, we would perform the the dance for our instructor, take a quick water break, and then she would make comments on it. She would tell us what we did wrong and what we did really well. She tried avoiding screaming at us during our performance and only provided necessary feedback. She encouraged us to fix mistakes on our own so that we didn't have to rely on her feedback, since we wouldn't be able to during competitions. The instructors most often used verbal knowledge of performance (both descriptive and prescriptive). We would be told if our legs weren't high enough (descriptive) or told to go the same direction as the girl directly to our right (prescriptive). We were also given knowledge of results, specifically when it came to our musicality or quality of movement. We would be told things like, "that looked too fast," or, "your arms needed to move this way instead".

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I have been told time after time, "If you progress in ballet, you will progress in everything else." I didn't understand how or why that's true until I understood transfer of learning. Transfer of learning is when the proficiency of one skill is the result of practice on another skill. This certainly occurs in dance, specifically positive transfer. Positive transfer is when practice on one skill is beneficial for the other skill. This occurs because the skills share very similar elements/component parts or because similar cognitive processes are required for each skill. Positive transfer existed in dance because those of us who had the most ballet training and most advanced training, we were also the most advanced in other styles. Ballet was devoted to mastering technique and practicing basic dance skills, while our classes were focused on cleaning and practicing dance routines. In the classes where we focused on our routines, our instructors barely had to mention our technique because what we learned in ballet transferred to these styles. Because of what we were learning in ballet, we did not have to address technical issues very often in our dance routines. Our ballet knowledge was the foundation for our movements. Our ballet training must have been beneficial for our other styles because learning ballet technique and learning dance routines used similar cognitive processes and similar component parts. This is true. Every style of dance uses the same technique and muscle movements. Additionally, my cognitive processes in learning any dance move was the same: I watched, thought about the proper muscles to use, and physically practiced. Because ballet technique is the same technique required for the other styles, it helped our progress in the other styles. Additionally, bilateral transfer occurs during ballet. Bilateral transfer is when we experience transfer of learning for the same task on the opposite limb. In ballet class, we were usually presented a barre or floor combination on one side, then executed the combination on both sides. While we were never taught the combination using our left side, we could still perform the combination just as well on our left side. In fact, most the skills we were taught in any style (leaps, turns, kicks, acrobatic tricks, etc.) were almost explicitly presented on the right side. However, in our performances, we were able to do the skills just as well on the left. I don't remember anyone ever being confused if they were assigned a skill with their non dominant hand or leg. Good thing the skills were taught using the right side, since most of us were dominant with our right side, and there is evidence suggesting that bilateral transfer more likely occurs if the skill is originally practiced with the dominant limb.

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I've learned so many dances and skills throughout the years, it's hard to believe how much of it I have stored in my memory. The information I learned in dance was stored in two possible memory systems. One system is the declarative memory system. This system stores knowledge about the world, memory of past experiences, and things that take conscious thought. In regards to dance, this meant storing memories of winning dance competitions, my favorite recitals, or dance terminology. Basically this memory system allows us to state facts and explain what something is or how something is done. The other memory system we have is procedural memory. In this system, we store unconscious thoughts of how to perform certain skills. These memories usually come automatically to a person and take little thought. In regards to dance, our actual dances belonged in our procedural memory system. During competition season, the choreography came so naturally to us. During practice, I wouldn't even be thinking about the steps because my body just knew what to do. Rather, I focused on small technical details or facial expressions, the things not in my procedural memory. Even today I could still perform the choreography of my past dances once I heard the music, but would have trouble talking a person through the moves step by step. This occurs because the dances are not only in my procedural memory, but in my long term memory. There is three stages of memory: sensory, short term, and long term. Sensory memory is taking in the information our five senses detect. In dance, this would occur when first learning a dance. We would be registering what the choreography looked like, what the music was, and how our body should feel. Short term memory is when we hold small amounts of information for a small period of time. When learning choreography, we could only be taught a few moves at at time to effectively remember the dance. We would be taught a small portion and practice it before moving on to the next part. This is when consolidation occurred, or when these few steps would gradually enter our long term memory. Long term memory is where we permanently store information. That's also why if someone asked me to perform a specific dance or move from my past, I could easily do it. Those "procedures" are permanently stuck in my head.

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Specificity of Motor Abilities Hypothesis

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Specificity of Motor Abilities Hypothesis

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My team really excelled when it came to our jazz, lyrical, and contemporary dances. However, tapping was a different story. My senior year, less than half of the team participated in the competitive tap dance. At the time, it didn't make sense how these such strong dancers otherwise, couldn't tap at a competitive level. However, as I learned in this class, different motor abilities were likely required for tap than the other styles. An ability is the capacity one has for achievement potential for the performance of specific skills. For the way ability is structured and the number of abilities a person has, there are two possible explanations: the General Motor Ability Hypothesis or the Specificity of Motor Abilities Hypothesis. The General Motor Ability Hypothesis predicts that there is one global motor ability that influences success in all motor performances. If this were true, one person would have a similar skill level on all motor abilities. The Specificity of Motor Abilities Hypothesis on the other hand, predicts that many different, independent motor abilities exist, and how well we perform depends on many of those abilities. If this hypothesis holds true, a person will have differing ability levels for each skill, since each is influenced by different abilities. This Specificity of Motor Abilities Hypothesis seems to hold true when it comes to dance. This would explain why some of my teammates struggled with tap, but excelled with other styles. Clearly the abilities that influenced tap performance were just not as advanced in my teammates as those required for lyrical or jazz. A dancer could not be expected to be an expert at every style, because different abilities are required for each style. Some dancers, like my teammates who were not all that skilled in tap, may just lack the amount of the abilities needed for tap.