Where you look affects performance?

[faulty_damper]

When people think about something, they have a tendency to look up.
When people are feeling emotional, they look down.
When people are lying, they look to the right (or is it the left?)

So the reason is apparently because of the what is occuring in the brain and how you are processing information and looking in the directions means you are accesing that part of your brain?  Because the brain connections are crossed, the left side of the body is controlled by the right brain and vice versa.  So looking right means the left side of the brain is being accesed.

Can anyone help inform me a bit more than this?  And am I right (or left) that when people lie they look right?

And how does this translate to playing piano and how we interpret the information when we play?  Would an emotionally-filled piece be interpreted or even be played better if we looked down?

Maybe I should try playing one piece looking up, down, left, and right, and a combination of them.

On a side question, I rarely ever look up and right and find it rather difficult to do so.  What does this mean?  But I do look up and left a lot.  Does this mean I'm a habitual liar who thinks very carefully about making up elaborate lies? 

[bernhard]

You are talking about representational systems. This is far too large a subject.

Here is the short of it:

Our mental activity follows sense perception. Whatever you represent in your mind will be sensorily based. So, if I ask you to think of your house, you may have a visual representation, that is, you will see a picture of your house in your mind’s eye. You may instead have an auditory representation of it and hear in your mind the sounds you associate with your house. Or you may be engulfed by a wave of physical sensations – technically called a kinaesthetic representation. You could also have  smells – an olfactory representation – although this is rare amongst civilised humans. You may even have a taste representation.

Typically only one of these representations will be present in your consciousness (if all of them were present you would not be able to differentiate between your mental representation and the representation of reality: you would experience a very convincing hallucination – which is what happens in dreams that are extremely vivid.) However the other sensorial components will be present in your unconscious.

Representations that occur in consciousness (that is, that you are aware of), typically surface in language:

“I can see clearly what you mean” (the person saying this is visualising)
“What you are saying definitely rings a bell” (the person is representing auditorily)
“I find it hard to come to grips with your ideas” (the person is representing kinaesthetically).

And so on.

Unconscious representations (the ones you are not aware of, but which are nevertheless there) typically in body language:

When a person visualises (but is unaware of the images in the mind) they look up and to the right – if the visualisation is eidetic (that is a remembered visualisation: if you have black eyes and you visualise your own eyes as they actually are).

Looking up and to the left indicates imagined (constructed) visualisation: if you imagine what your eyes would look like if they were blue. So as you can see, not necessarily a lie.

Looking to the sides indicate auditory representations. (again, to the right: eidetic; to the left: constructed).

Looking down indicates kinaesthetic representation. (also smell and taste).

This is of course a wide generalisation. People can vary quite a bit in this respect, but an individual person will always be consistent. So you can easily find out by asking the right sort of question:

“In traffic light, where is the red light? On the top or on the bottom?” To answer this question the person must visualise the traffic light even if they are unaware that they are visualising it. Watch their eye movements and you will know for that person what is the giveaway for unconscious visualisation.

“What does it feel like to jump in a frozen lake in winter?” They do not need to answer verbally: they will answer you non-verbally, and if you watch their eye movement you will know what happens when they represent kinaesthetically.

“How does the Beethoven 5th symphony goes?” To answer this, you must acces your auditory representations, so your eye movement will be a telltale for what you are doing internally.

Eye movement is not the only way to figure this out. Voice tempo is also a giveaway. In general when visualising people tend to speak in high tones and very fast, while when representing kinesthaetically people tend to speak slowly and in low tones. There are literally thousands of body signals that can tell you the structure of someone’s unconscious thoughts if you are sensitive enough and if you know what to look for.

Finally, you can have non-sensorial thoughts – Which you use for instance when having an intellectual discussion or proving a mathematical theorem. But  – unless you are a highly trained person – everything is pretty messy and confusion usually prevails.

Best wishes,
Bernhard.

[faulty_damper]

So where one looks could affect their playing?  Like when we look at a dirty garbage can with a smile and then a frown, the prior would seem less disgusting than the frown.  The simple act of smiling changes ones perceptions.  So even ones facial expressions change our perceptions and thus our reactions.

I guess I'm trying to figure out if there is a proper place to look that could enhance ones playing.

[m1469]

I guess I'm trying to figure out if there is a proper place to look that could enhance ones playing.

What exactly would be thee enhancing quality should you find a specific or "proper" place to look?  What exactly do you feel would be enhanced?  Who is this meant to benefit?

[caro]

When people think about something, they have a tendency to look up.
When people are feeling emotional, they look down.
When people are lying, they look to the right (or is it the left?)

So the reason is apparently because of the what is occuring in the brain and how you are processing information and looking in the directions means you are accesing that part of your brain?  Because the brain connections are crossed, the left side of the body is controlled by the right brain and vice versa.  So looking right means the left side of the brain is being accesed.

Can anyone help inform me a bit more than this?  And am I right (or left) that when people lie they look right?

And how does this translate to playing piano and how we interpret the information when we play?  Would an emotionally-filled piece be interpreted or even be played better if we looked down?

Maybe I should try playing one piece looking up, down, left, and right, and a combination of them.

On a side question, I rarely ever look up and right and find it rather difficult to do so.  What does this mean?  But I do look up and left a lot.  Does this mean I'm a habitual liar who thinks very carefully about making up elaborate lies? 

hahahaha....deep thoughts...but I should tell u,take care or we must bring you to a mental institution soon .U´r head will explote before u have time to look up ...or right?
 

[Tash]

i dunno if looking in particular places enhances our performance, but i know i do tend to look straight ahead if i suddenly have a mental blank and start thinking about which notes to hit next and don't know, so looking up lets my fingers go where they know where to go without my brain interfering. however i don't really like looking up cos it feels more disconnected to the piece, and thus will look more downwards, though not necessarily at my fingers cos then i just get absorbed in the movement and mess everything up