Phenomenological Body Schema as Motor Habit in Skill Acquisition – Intentionality is in Action

Abstract

The purpose of this concept-based paper was to showcase the importance of Merleau-Ponty’s (1945/2014) phenomenological body schema as motor habit in skill acquisition and perception of the world and contrast it with the standard information processing models that are solely based on cognition. Examples of disability cases are used, including Schneider’s brain damage and instances of apraxia, to exhibit that difficulty in executing certain motor skills is based on lack of body schema/motor habit and not on some gnostic disorder that inhibits representation as proposed in information processing. Habitual body movement is essential in understanding body schema as motor habit, which is a pre-reflective consciousness, an inter-sensorial unity. Motor skills are learned only via body movement because the body “grasps” and “conceives” movement by throwing itself into meaningful significations without calculating the distance between body parts and external objects. Motor skill execution is done tacitly via body schema that may involve essential external apparatus like a blind man’s cane or aerial silks in aerial practice. Constant engagement with concrete, functional movements and different ways to perform abstract movements (e.g., use of preparatory actions and vision), can improve body schema/motor habit, and thus mobility, skill performance, and understanding of the world. Keywords: body schema, motor habit, skill acquisition and learning, Merleau-Ponty, phenomenology