Working in Movement

Does paying attention to something increase awareness it, and does the increased awareness somehow alter perception? In other words, do people who appreciate stuff like art, music or whatever, perceive that stuff differently than the rest of us lowbrows? Apparently paying attention to the stuff develops a keen perception that can lead to appreciation. There may be hope for us. But how do you learn to pay attention when all the stuff looks or sounds the same to you, when you don't notice much difference between different pieces of art, music or whatever?

Paying more attention to object changes its perceived appearance in Brainconnection summarizes a recent piece of neural research that looks into the question. The study ask participants to notice visual differences in two grates they were viewing. One of the grates was always preceded by a small dot that drew attention to that grate. When the contrast between the two grates was really different, the choice was easy. But when the contrast between the two grates was not so different, participants consistently tended to pick out the one with the dot.

What's interesting about this was how the researchers induced perception of difference when little visual difference was apparent. It was by adding variety or novelty in the form of the dot in front of one of the grates. Without the novelty of the dot, participants might not be able to notice any difference. But this new cue evidently induced a deeper awareness of the one grate, and that led to a perception of difference. And, who knows, that might have launched some on a new career path of grate critic.

This idea of introducing variety or novelty into the perceptual field is not confined to art or even to the visual sense. It also works in movement, in mostly the same way. Deeply ingrained habits of movement or bodily patterns induce a kind of sameness into the proprioceptive sense. In other words, you don't notice exactly how you are using your body. In most cases, that's alright. But if the movement patterns are causing problems, not being able to sense them doesn't help. If you don't know what you are doing, how can you change it?

But by introducing variety or novelty into the movement patterns, things begin to stand out. Which is a great thing if your unrecognized movement patterns are causing problems. Lots of back pain and other forms of discomfort originate here. But when you can become aware of differences, change is possible, sometimes easily so. In movement, this might be to change a movement pattern that is not useful, whether it's causing pain, or a wicked slice that's ruining your golf game. Once noticed, some changes are easy. But it takes awareness of movement or pattern, and that sometimes takes introducing variety into the repertoire of movements, which makes things stand out.