Cognition Curiousity

[bjarvis]

Every now and again while calling a square dance, I notice minor errors on the dance floor. God knows I've committed many errors great & small while dancing and there are many more spectacular square crashes in my personal future so I don't want to seem to pick on dancers in general or one in particular. Anyway...

Most callers detecting an error or general confusion in a square will provide gentle prompting to help figure out the call, or at least get a good working final formation so the next call can proceed. We'll do stuff like "you'll have normal lines facing out" or "you're in a right-handed column."

In most dances, the cue is given, the dancers fix their arrangement and we're off & dancing once again, no big deal.


Sometimes, callers need to do a lot more prompting: "You'll have a right-handed column. A column. Four pairs of people holding hands facing in opposite directions. Just two holding hands, not three. Two. Seriously, just two. By the right hand. The right hand. No, the other right hand. Yes, that right hand. Both of you. Now both of you at the same time."

Clearly the dancer(s) was (were) struggling to figure out their formation, but why was it a struggle?

Possibilities:

• They hear the cues but ignore them, believing the cues are directed to someone else, confident in their own personal correctness. I believe apparentparadox used the expression "strong and wrong" to describe a dancer some time ago.
  
• They were so cognitively focused on figuring out the prior call that they're filtering all outside sound, including the caller's cues. They're not ignoring the cues: they don't hear the caller at all.
  
• They are actively trying to reconcile their understanding of the prior call with the rest of the square, attempting to figure out who is in error; again, the intensity of their cognition blocks external cues.
  
• They hear the cues but cannot see the overall formation and therefore cannot find their individual location. They then pause for the general formation to coalesce so they can insert themselves appropriately. (How the square self-organizes and asserts its formation & arrangement is another issue.)
  
• They hear the cues but cannot interpret them.
  
  • Perhaps they are having difficulty mapping the verbal description "right-handed columns" onto their internalized feel of the formation.
    
  • Perhaps there is too much cuing or it is too rapidly delivered, causing more confusion than help.
    
  • Callers and dancers don't share a particular vocabulary: callers in conversation among themselves may refer to "left-handed normal two-faced lines" or "3/4 tag" or such with perfect clarity; while dancers could figure it out eventually, it's not in their casual vocabulary. (NB: Challenge level dancers are much more adept at understanding the descriptive vocabulary.)
  
  
• They hear the cues, understand the cues and know what they need to do, but something becomes garbled between understanding and execution. For example, they know they're supposed to be holding right hands and believe they are holding right hands but are actually holding lefts.
  • Then we must also consider: if the execution is garbled, is their internal self-check either non-existent or simultaneously failing?
  • If their self-check is present and failing, has it failed by the same internal issue that sabotaged their initial execution or something else?
  
  

There may be other explanations I haven't considered yet... feel free to add your own.

Does anyone know of any psychological examination of this phenomenon? I'm sure this isn't exclusive to square dancing but I haven't had enough time --or psych background-- yet to generalize it or consider possible keywords for effective literature searches.

Why do I care? Knowing the cause will help sculpt my cuing and/or fix for a situation. Perhaps I need to train my new classes more intensely in repairing a square. Perhaps I need to throttle back my cuing, modify the cues for clarity, or wait longer before offering help so that I'm not adding to the dancers' cognitive clutter. I'm not immediately sure of the right approach but I suspect it's situation-dependent.

Advice?

Comments

[billeyler.livejournal.com]

I go back to the time about 1985 or 1986 when I went from not seeing the dancers on the floor to being able to connect with them and SEE them. It was an epiphany and the first time I felt like I had made progress...took me over a year to get to that point.

I don't know what would help new/newer callers except mic time, like you and your honey have in heaping helpings! That's what worked for me. I don't get how many GCA callers have NO practice time, but spend lots and lots of time writing choreo, and using it, not knowing if it works and not knowing how to cue or resolve by sight, but there ya go.

[bjarvis.livejournal.com]

I don't get how many GCA callers have NO practice time, but spend lots and lots of time writing choreo, and using it, not knowing if it works and not knowing how to cue or resolve by sight, but there ya go.

The biggest sign of inexperience IMHO is their delivery: are they giving the calls clearly, well articulated, with confidence and well-timed? Do we hear enthusiasm or fear in their voice? I can hear when they're looking into their notes and when they're looking at the floor. I prefer sucky choreo energetically delivered over great choreo whispered in fear.

If we could add another few hours to the GCA caller school, I'd allocate a larger block of time to spiffing up vocal delivery, even if it's just how to fake confidence. :-)

[billeyler.livejournal.com]

And as our friend Warren Jacquith often said, "It's all smoke and mirrors!"