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

This could be a nice article for the Call Sheet...

[allanh.livejournal.com]

Perhaps they're just not paying attention. :)

Mike DeSisto has a neat cuing trick in which he gets the incorrect dancer's attention by talking about clothes. "Uh...if yer in a green shirt, you should be holding hands with someone in a white shirt." I find it considerably more polite than using names: "Ignatz, turn around."

Re: This could be a nice article for the Call Sheet...

[bjarvis.livejournal.com]

Perhaps they're just not paying attention. :)

Yeah, I was kinda making the leap that the dancers actually cared. :-)

I remember some years ago Betsy Gotta pinging me every so politely at ACDC: "If your initials are BJ, you're a member of the host club and you live in Silver Spring, MD, you may want to consider doing a U turn back. When you're ready, of course." We had a good laugh although I don't think my face has been that particular shade of red since.

[excessor.livejournal.com]

They don't know what a right-handed column is. Or a wave. Or where the right hand is.

Many people do not understand (or cannot operationalize, or both) terms like “left-turn a quarter” or some other directional cue with a duration.

It certainly was the case when I was learning from the very beginning. allanh likes to tease me that I must have been halfway through the class before I realized that every call doesn't end with the phrase “Turn around, Paul.”

I'm (re-)taking an A1/2 class right now. Some of our better Plus dancers are in it, and they freely admit to having no clue what a right-handed wave is. Plus, when you're trying so hard, the simple things often trip you up.

That's why I love to watch an A2 tip with lots of <airquote>advanced</airquote> dancers when it breaks down at “Bow to your partner” or “half tag.”

[apparentparadox]

wooddragon made a comment this weekend that is applicable to your posting. She believes that having the caller talk to you immediately lowers your IQ.

[billeyler.livejournal.com]

I take it you're writing an article for the Call Sheet and want our feedback? ;-)

I've never seen square FUBARs to that degree without someone just telling everyone to go home. Yet, that is.

One of my chuckles, often nightly, is when I announce the formation they're in if I see something isn't right, like "You're home!" or "You're in a RH wave!" Then I get vigorous negative headshaking, instead of them getting finding the correct formation.

One of Kris' sayings she picked up somewhere is "Later that very same day..."

We all get a chuckle out of it...eventually.

[bjarvis.livejournal.com]

Did your past callers not use formation names or did they just not make sense at the time to a new dancer? Would it help at all if the formation names & terms were emphasized a bit more in the early days, or would it be just too distracting from actual dancing (and possibly too much like work)?

Would it be better if the caller didn't try to help at all, letting the square find its own way? If all eight don't have a clue, there's no hope, but this leads me to wonder what the critical clue-mass required is for a square to fix itself... Four out of eight? Five? Six? Dunno.

[bjarvis.livejournal.com]

I hadn't considered it possible Call Sheet material, but perhaps it is. Presuming, of course, that there is material we can use instead of just more questions.

Some of my posting came from last night's MS class where we seemed to do more additional cuing than usual. A few more angels would have helped and it was an off night for some of the new dancers... such things happen. This morning, I was transcribing some C1 calling from a few prior ACDC fly-ins and started thinking about the nature of caller-dancer communications and whether our cuing is a help or hindrance and how cues might be offered in a more productive fashion.

I suspect there's no single best way to offer cues but perhaps there is a handful of general rules which might cover most situations and which could help newbie callers be more confident and earn the dancers' confidence. More thought is required.

[billeyler.livejournal.com]

I'm finding few callers these days verbally cuing dancers through calls, unless they see the floor is really weak overall. I'm trying to cue less, because I've found that the cueing becomes part of the call (Right and Left Thru, turn the girl or Tag the Line, all the way thru), and if they don't hear ALL of it, it's not a complete call, and gives a momentary synapse hesitation in execution.

Paul P said it right...it's mostly just body memory for most calls and only hearing either selectively or incorrectly. For the dancer, it's "go with the flow till you cain't go no mo."

Case in point: How often do you call a Spin Chain Thru that the initial point dancers don't turn back to try to form a star, but looking perplexed because they're not sure they need to? (they don't of course). I workshop that enough that I'd THINK that the point dancers will stand still for 10 counts of music (or whatever it is) and know not to turn around, but they get nervous not moving.

As for tact, it's an art in telling someone (usually the same someones all the time) to turn around...I've not mastered that one, for sure!

[bjarvis.livejournal.com]

Does that include the calls? :-)

[apparentparadox]

Oh, were you talking to me? I wasn't listening.

[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!"

[excessor.livejournal.com]

My instructor was otterpop58 and yes, he definitely used the formation names. I would argue that at lower levels, you don't have to know that it's a right-hand wave because all you know are waves and callers very rarely make them left-handed. So we see in Adv class that when you get to Pass the Sea, most of the newbies can't do it because they've never had to do a left-hand wave without being cued to death with it.

In fact, the only times the names and their definitions become important become important is when you're dancing to a new caller (rare for newbies) or when you're trying to dance TNP or DBD. We don't teach those. I'm in the tiny minority of people who believe that it's worth teaching DBD from day 1 (or maybe from month 3) so that you can have meaningful discussions as you move up the level ladder.

I like when the caller helps. Often the square will not find its own way. Sometimes the sound goes out and only half the square hears the full call, so cueing is important at some level.

I think the critical clue-mass is inversely proportional to the number of clueless dancers. If you have one clueless dancer, you need four or five confident dancers to help strengthen the square. Two clueless dancers means the rest must be confident. More clueless dancers in one square means you have to get out the bat.

[abqdan.livejournal.com]

I'm always impressed with the resistance movement. Just as the French Resistance refused to believe the Germans were occupying France, some dancers refuse to believe the caller:

Caller: "... and now you are all facing OUT of course"

The Resistance: "no, I'm facing in".

:-)

[bjarvis.livejournal.com]

Gotta admire their stubborn determination in the face of reality. :-)

[trawnapanda.livejournal.com]

you know, if the caller is having to say things like "the other right hand", the individual(s) concerned are confused to the point of not processing properly. Hence "no, I'm facing in". Or the sound going in their ears just not connecting with a realisation that they need to move.

the dancer(s) concerned may or may not be hearing, but they're mentally stunned, or freezing, in the way that I see students who have just made a significant mistake in the lab (drop a beaker, for instance, with resulting shattering noises), and they'll go bunny-in-the-headlights on me. Not for long (and not everyone does after they've killed a beaker, but some do), but for longer than a couple of bars (assuming I had background music in my labs).

They eventually snap back into focus, but once they've done it on one occasion, it doesn't take much that lab session to put 'em back in the headlights (or do a Bambi-on-the-ice). It's a mental processing issue.

[greyguy-sf.livejournal.com]

If there are, say, six squares in a room, and the caller is regularly correcting or commnenting to one off-base dancer (say, someone who is prematurely grey) the other dancers know that the prompting isn't for them. The next time they also assume that it isn't for them. And the next time, and so on. Well, when it is not that greyguy, but is that humpy 32 year old with the big moustache, Mr Moustache still assumes it is not about him, and ignores the caller.... until the caller connects to him more specifically.

It is a variation on the problem with too much patter. If callers prompt calls the dancers already know, they stop listening, and that act of "stop hearing" carries over to other situations when they need to hear.

It is so diffficult for a non-involved dancer hears the caller single out a another dancer with something like " No, trade with her..." that the defensive filters turn on and important information also gets filtered out.