Motor performance domains, such as sports and the performing arts, provide optimal situations to investigate the determinants of action perception.
The key takeaway is that peak performers spend as much time studying themselves as studying their performance domains.
His book The Epic Rhapsode and His Craft examines how the cultural role and profession of the rhapsode, the ancient Greek performer of Homeric poetry, developed in dialectic tension with the related performance domains of oracular poetry, dramatic acting, and oratorical delivery.
Attention to the ways in which these performance domains informed each other over time reveals a shifting dynamic of competition and emulation among rhapsodes, actors, and orators that shaped their texts and their crafts.
Enhanced cortical cholinergic signaling associated with nicotinic acetylcholine receptor (nAChR) stimulation has been linked with pro-cognitive actions in a variety of performance domains, including attentional tasks.
Future research should explore phenomena more systematically as well as continue to examine the differences that exist between circus arts and other performance domains.
