What Studies of Actors and Acting Can Tell Us about Memory and Cognitive Functioning

The art of acting has been defined as the ability to live truthfully under imaginary circumstances. Our many years of researching theatrical expertise have produced findings relevant to text comprehension, learning theory, cognitive aging, and expert memory. In this article, we first discuss how lar...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Current directions in psychological science : a journal of the American Psychological Society 2006-02, Vol.15 (1), p.14-18
Main Authors: Noice, Helga, Noice, Tony
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Acting
Actors
Aging
Bottles
Coding theory
Cognition
Cognition & reasoning
Learning
Mayors
Memory
Older adults
Psychology
Scripts
Theater
Theory
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Summary:The art of acting has been defined as the ability to live truthfully under imaginary circumstances. Our many years of researching theatrical expertise have produced findings relevant to text comprehension, learning theory, cognitive aging, and expert memory. In this article, we first discuss how large amounts of dialogue, learned in a very short period, can be reproduced in real time with complete spontaneity. We then turn to abstracting the essence of acting and applying it to diverse undertakings, from discovering optimal learning strategies to promoting healthy cognitive aging. Finally, we address the implications of acting expertise on current theories of embodied cognition.
ISSN:0963-7214
1467-8721
DOI:10.1111/j.0963-7214.2006.00398.x