The Cognitive Benefits of Movement Reduction

Abstract

In a number of domains, humans adopt a strategy of systematically reducing and minimizing a codified system of movement. One particularly interesting case is "marking" in dance, wherein the dancer performs an attenuated version of the choreography during rehearsal. This is ostensibly to save the dancer's physical energy, but a number of considerations suggest that it may serve a cognitive function as well. In this study, we tested this embodied-cognitive-load hypothesis by manipulating whether dancers rehearsed by marking or by dancing "full out" and found that performance was superior in the dancers who had marked. This finding indicates that marking confers cognitive benefits during the rehearsal process, and it raises questions regarding the cognitive functions of other movement-reduction systems, such as whispering, gesturing, and subvocalizing. In addition, it has implications for a variety of topics in cognitive science, including embodied cognition and the nascent fields of dance and music cognition.

Toward a more embedded/extended perspective on the cognitive function of gestures

“…Interesting in this regard, is research that suggests that different types of body-movements have their own cognitive load (or come with particular cognitive costs) and may at times be traded for less costly bodily movements. That is dancers who rehearsed a dance-routine performed better when they rehearsed through “marking” (minimal movements and use of gestures to stand in for full-out movements) as opposed to rehearsing the routine full out (Warburton et al, 2013). Thus, it seems that under certain conditions, gestures, once cheap resources to think with, become relatively costly in comparison to, and are therefore traded in for, purely internal strategies.…”

Effects of cognitive and motor tasks on the walking speed of individuals with chronic stroke

“…Thus, the cognitive and motor processing conflict also increased, resulting in slower speeds. [11,32] Serial subtraction taxes the working memory component of cognition. [12,33] The subjects were instructed to prioritize neither the walking nor the additional cognitive or motor task.…”

The Trajectory of Concurrent Motor and Vocal Behaviors Over the Transition to Crawling in Infancy

“…Using skill acquisition as a model for understanding resource allocation, we speculate that infants’ allocation of attention over the transition to crawling prompted behavioral trade‐offs. During mastery of a novel skill, infants had difficulty allocating attention to multiple tasks, but with experience, a decrease in attentional load for the new skill allowed performance of simultaneous behaviors in other domains to occur (Warburton, Wilson, Lynch, & Cuykendall, ).…”