Papers by Barbara Gail Montero
How do great athletes defy the power law of practice, according to which improvements in skill ev... more How do great athletes defy the power law of practice, according to which improvements in skill eventually plateau? To solve this puzzle, this book presents a theory of ‘continuous improvement’ which emphasizes the role that conscious processes play in maintaining and advancing skilled performers’ movement capacities. It argues that continuous improvement requires the use of processes such as abstract thought and bodily awareness in order to strategically alter and improve habitual movements in response to contextual demands. The book also elucidates a number of strategies that might be used to improve an athlete’s attentional control and help them switch their focus when they realize they have adopted task-irrelevant thoughts. Finally, it presents a range of methodological approaches that might be used by researchers to better understand the attentional flexibility that characterizes skilled action across training and performance contexts.
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Economics and the Mind Economics is often described as the science of choice or human action, but... more Economics and the Mind Economics is often described as the science of choice or human action, but although both of these concepts are essentially mental, economists have paid little attention to the relevant developments made by philosophers of mind. Economics and the ...
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Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 2014
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... Page 7. Joel David HamMns and Barbara Montero 237 after all, the reason why we judged Dan and... more ... Page 7. Joel David HamMns and Barbara Montero 237 after all, the reason why we judged Dan and Daniela's worlds to be equally good was precisely because they were, in all important utilitarian aspects, exactly the same. That is, we did so because they were isomorphic. ...
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A large body of experimental evidence is commonly cited in support of a view called “the attentio... more A large body of experimental evidence is commonly cited in support of a view called “the attentional focus effect,” which is the hypothesis that focusing on the body (typically designated as an “internal” focus of attention) leads to suboptimal results relative to focusing on the consequences of bodily actions (commonly regarded as an “external” focus of attention). In this chapter, after
spending some time unfolding the nature and scope of the attentional focus effect, we look into the difficulty of eliminating confounds in experiments testing the effect and examine four situations in which an internal attentional focus appears, at least sometimes, to be preferable to an external one. These situations, we suggest, are worthy of further empirical investigation before we can accept that the attentional focus effect applies to all types of skills, all skill levels, and all measures of performance quality.
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Susan Schneider argues that physicalism must be false if abstracta are part of the physicalist's ... more Susan Schneider argues that physicalism must be false if abstracta are part of the physicalist's dependence base. In opposition to her view, here I set out some reasons to think that abstracta in general, including abstracta that are woven into the dependence base, are something physicalists can countenance with consistency. Everyone has their demons. For some, it's addictions. For others, it's the failure to live up to parental expectations. For me, it's my thighs: why are they so big? But perhaps I digress. Already. Physicalists have their demons too; for them, it's abstract entities, in particular, the abstract, mathematical relations that, as some have argued, are an inextricable part of the physical base, that is to say, an inextricable part of the fundamental properties and entities upon which the rest of the world is built. Physicalists may have other demons too; if they're like the rest of us, they've got to. But at least this much is clear: physicalism is true only if the things we know and love — our tables, our chairs, our minds, our bodies, and most ardently our phones — are somehow all ultimately built out of or dependent on entirely concrete aspects of the world. The intrusion of abstracta ravages everything. Or at least, this is the view espoused by Susan Schneider in her paper, 'Does the Mathematical Nature of Physics Undermine Physicalism?', in which she argues that physicalism must be false if abstracta are part of the dependence base of chairs, tables, phones, and so forth. Here, in my own divagating way, I beg to differ: one can be a veritable physicalist and countenance abstracta too. Or at least I'd like to set out some reasons to think that abstracta in general, including the abstracta woven into the dependence base (base-abstracta), are something physicalists can accept with consistency.
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Philosophical Topics, 2011
ABSTRACT What is it for a bodily movement to be effortless? What are we appreciating when we admi... more ABSTRACT What is it for a bodily movement to be effortless? What are we appreciating when we admire a dancer’s effortless leaps, a basketball player’s effortless shot, or even a seagull’s effortless soar? I propose to explore the notion of effortlessness by distinguishing various kinds of effortless bodily movements, examining the idea that effortless movements are smooth, predictable ones, discussing the relations between effortlessness and difficulty and effortlessness and actual ease, and speculating briefly about how we perceive and why we take pleasure in watching effortless movements.
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Philosophical Topics, 2012
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Philosophical Topics, 2011
ABSTRACT What is it for a bodily movement to be effortless? What are we appreciating when we admi... more ABSTRACT What is it for a bodily movement to be effortless? What are we appreciating when we admire a dancer’s effortless leaps, a basketball player’s effortless shot, or even a seagull’s effortless soar? I propose to explore the notion of effortlessness by distinguishing various kinds of effortless bodily movements, examining the idea that effortless movements are smooth, predictable ones, discussing the relations between effortlessness and difficulty and effortlessness and actual ease, and speculating briefly about how we perceive and why we take pleasure in watching effortless movements.
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... And so, returning to your afterlife choice between Purgatory and the superposition of fates i... more ... And so, returning to your afterlife choice between Purgatory and the superposition of fates in Heaven and Hell, our conclusion is that there can be no Utilitarian reason to prefer one choice over the other, or even to be indifferent between them. ...
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Review of General Psychology, 2015
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The Southern Journal of Philosophy, 2015
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Proprioception has been considered, within neuroscience, in the context of the control of move-me... more Proprioception has been considered, within neuroscience, in the context of the control of move-ment. Here we discuss a possible second role for this 'sixth sense', pleasure in and of movement, homologous with the recently described affective touch. We speculate on its evolution and place in human society and suggest that pleasure in movement may depend not on feedback but also on harmony between intention and action. Examples come from expert movers, dancers and sportsmen, and from those without proprioception due to neurological impairment. Finally we suggest that affective proprioception may help bind our sense of agency with our embodied selves at an emotional level.
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Mind, 2015
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The Oxford Handbook of German Philosophy in the Nineteenth Century, 2015
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Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 2014
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Embodied Aesthetics, 2014
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Journal of Consciousness Studies
I am going to argue that it is time to come to terms with the difficulty of understanding what it... more I am going to argue that it is time to come to terms with the difficulty of understanding what it means to be physical and start thinking about the mind-body problem from a new perspective. Instead of construing it as the problem of finding a place for mentality in a fundamentally physical world, we should think of it as the problem of finding a place for mentality in a fundamentally nonmental world, a world that is at its most fundamental level entirely nonmental. The mind-body problem, I want to argue, is the problem of determining whether mentality can be accounted for in terms of nonmental phenomena. In other words, it is the question, is mentality a fundamental feature of the world.
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Papers by Barbara Gail Montero
spending some time unfolding the nature and scope of the attentional focus effect, we look into the difficulty of eliminating confounds in experiments testing the effect and examine four situations in which an internal attentional focus appears, at least sometimes, to be preferable to an external one. These situations, we suggest, are worthy of further empirical investigation before we can accept that the attentional focus effect applies to all types of skills, all skill levels, and all measures of performance quality.
spending some time unfolding the nature and scope of the attentional focus effect, we look into the difficulty of eliminating confounds in experiments testing the effect and examine four situations in which an internal attentional focus appears, at least sometimes, to be preferable to an external one. These situations, we suggest, are worthy of further empirical investigation before we can accept that the attentional focus effect applies to all types of skills, all skill levels, and all measures of performance quality.