Embodied Experience in the Cognitive Ecologies of Skilled Performance

Abstract

Research on expert skills is harder than studying particular cognitive processes -remembering, hearing, grieving, and so on -because its domain is less neatly bounded. Skill and expertise are multi-level, composite phenomena: multi-level in that they involve neural, cognitive, aff ective, motor, social, technological, and cultural processes and resources all at once, composite in that expert musicians or sportspeople are deploying many integrated psychological, bodily, and social capacities all at once, from perception and attention through emotion and memory to precise movement coordination and interactive communication.In a provocative paper for the new Journal of Expertise , Fernand Gobet laments that 'the current state of research into expertise is problematic as knowledge is currently fragmented and communication between disciplines is poor'. This is 'regrettable, as many contradictions between the disciplines have been ignored and many opportunities for cross-fertilization missed' (2018: 1, 5).We embrace Gobet's challenge: 'the way forward for the fi eld of expertise is to join forces and carry out multi-disciplinary research' (2018: 5). We highlight skill phenomena much discussed by expert practitioners, specialist applied researchers, and philosophers infl uenced by phenomenology and ethnography, which have received less attention in cognitive neuroscience and philosophy of mind. We focus on (a) the embodied experience of (b) real expert performers in (c) real domains of practice, as they deploy (d) richly embedded strategies in (e) full and challenging ecological settings.This should not be a surprising 'turn' in the fi eld: while there are many reasonable ways to study skill, one useful path is to fi nd, track, closely observe, and listen to experts. This is a natural route to striking case studies, new puzzles, suggestive angles on existing questions, mature empirical traditions, and rich bodies of theory. While here we take the arts and, primarily, sport as our core domains, this kind of naturalistic or natural philosophy of expertise also operates in other fi elds, from medical diagnosis and surgery to emergency response, from aviation to software engineering, from teaching to science. These fi elds have long been investigated empirically,

From Something Old to Something New: Functionalist Lessons for the Cognitive Science of Scientific Creativity

“…But individuals can also over time become differentially sensitive to some aspects of the situation more than others (that is, more than they are sensitive to other aspects and also more sensitive than other people are to the same aspects): as an activity, perceiving can become more skillful through attunement or the “education of attention” (Gibson, 1966 ; Jacobs and Michaels, 2007 ; Araújo and Davids, 2011 ). This can be seen as a specific instance of what James and Dewey both referred to as “habits,” that is, specialized, context-sensitive patterns of activity—in this case, the activity of perceiving or exploring the environment (refer to James, 1890/1983 , 1899 ; Dewey, 1922 ; Segundo-Ortin and Heras-Escribano, 2021 ; for related embodied accounts emphasizing the ecology of skillful performance refer to, e.g., Christensen et al, 2016 ; Christensen and Sutton, 2019 ; Sutton and Bicknell, 2020 ). Importantly, however, what is at play here is direct contact with reality and the detection (rather than inference or estimation) of relations between things in the world: “The mind does not need to associate sequential regularities; such regularities only need to be detected.…”

Cognitive Ecologies of Presence(S) in Three Different Dance Forms

“…Recently, in the field of dance and performance studies there has been an increased interest in analysis of performance practices through cognitive approaches (Paavolainen 2012;Sofia 2013;Blair and Cook 2016;Kemp and McConachie 2019;Vass-Rhee 2015;Weber 2016;Hansen and Bläsing 2017;Hansen 2022), particularly in the paradigm of the '4E cognition theory', a recent current in cognitive science that recognises the central role of the body in shaping the mind (Sutton and Bicknell 2020;Hansen and Vass 2021).…”

Cognitive control, intentions, and problem solving in skill learning

“…The breadth and depth of evaluation varies, and it is certainly true that there is greater opportunity for deep and wide evaluation before and after performance compared with during, but nevertheless, higher levels of control can be 'in play' during performance. Thus a professional bike rider might, during a race, re-evaluate their ability, re-evaluate their strategy for a particular obstacle, re-evaluate their race strategy, or pacing plan (Christensen & Bicknell, 2019 ; Sutton & Bicknell, 2020 ). More broadly, an athlete may re-evaluate their strategy for the season, and might even re-evaluate their commitment to racing at this level.…”

“…We employed a researcher-practitioner approach, in which the authors served the dual roles of investigators and participants (see Bicknell, 2021 ; Downey, 2022 ; Downey et al, 2015 ; McIlwain & Sutton, 2014 , 2015 ; Nemani & Thorpe 2016 ; Olive et al 2016 ; Ravn, 2022 ; Samudra, 2008 ; Spinney, 2006 ; Sutton & Bicknell, 2020 ). This approach brings attention to theoretically and ecologically significant aspects of skilled action in contexts that are difficult to capture in the laboratory, from the armchair, or when the researcher is unfamiliar with the nuances of a particular community of practice.…”