Prototype Formation among Professional Dancers

Abstract

Professional dancers were asked to learn a series of dance steps which were derived from a base geometric pattern considered to be a prototypic pattern. Exemplar steps varied in terms of their similarity to the base pattern. Following training, subjects were given a recognition task in which previously experienced dance steps were performed along with new steps and the prototype dance. The subjects were asked to judge if each of a second set of dance steps were “old” or “new” and to give confidence ratings. The results showed that professional dancers falsely recognized the prototype dance as an old dance. The judged familiarity of test dances was directly related to the mathematically determined similarity of test items to the prototype. A second group of non-professional subjects were presented with identical conditions. Non-professional dancers also falsely recognize the prototype dance as an old dance. The results suggest that experts in dance, as well as non-experts, store frequently experienced features of a complex motor task and manifest such memory by giving false alarms to a prototypical pattern of a learning set. It is suggested that similar traits may be found in other forms of artistic expression.