Can you think without words?

[Duke]

I believe that is called motor memory or muscle memory. Same for dancers. It becomes automatic. To this day if I point a toe, my knee rotates out because in ballet that is what happens for the leg to be aligned properly. That muscle memory can be very deep and last forever. I don't think it...it just happens.

*lol* To this day, if somebody hands or tosses me a football, it immediately is tucked away under my arm. No thought involved, purely muscle memory from thousands of repetitions of catching, then tucking, the ball.

 

[Debi]

*lol* To this day, if somebody hands or tosses me a football, it immediately is tucked away under my arm. No thought involved, purely muscle memory from thousands of repetitions of catching, then tucking, the ball.

LOL A gymnast, a dancer, and a football player walk into a bar.....

 

[Paintman]

Good thoughts, Paintman. So what part of the memory is reinforced when a player repeatedly performs the same physical motion. Baseball players playing catch, a batter swinging a bat, a golfer swing his club, catching something thrown at you. These motor skills are learned so we'll that I would imagine that a third baseman reaches and snags a line drive without much "thinking." Is there really something called muscle memory ?

Yes, and off of my head in involves two key factors. Developing muscle memory is essentially training your nervous system. I'm sure we all learn how to throw a baseball the same way. early on you played catch with mom and dad and your siblings,and every kid in the neighborhood. When you didn't have anyone to play with you threw the tennis ball against the garage door. With enough reps the nerves in the brain coordinate with the nerves in your muscles. It becomes unconscious, effortless, and hopefully with consistent repeatability.
Now let's take that skill over the third base in a live game . The batter hits a screaming ball inside the line, what the third baseman is playing in a traditional position, two steps behind and two steps to the left of third base. With The Incredible velocity of the game he has no time to think how to field the ball. As he moves he makes an instinctual hypothesis. In practice and in games he has fielded thousands of balls that look like this one, but no two are ever the same. If his instincts are correct and he fields the ball ,then he gets to throw it to first base. The next instinctual hypothesis is in the air.
This hypothesis is based on a long list of variables. Is the base runner faster, slow, or maybe he's injured ? Batter information is passed along in the scouting report -pre game. Can the first baseman stretch to catch an offline throw? If the pitcher is right handed his back is going to be towards the third baseman. Do you trust him to duck ? Or do you just throw around him ?
So now this instinctual hypothesis has to predict the future. I called this second function of the brain 'the look.' Given all of this data happening in a split second, based on what the third baseman has seen similarly a thousand times before ,he has to decide what the right play is right now.
The opaque nature of these mental processes has lead to a lot of theories. You can draw a straight historical line from Plato to Descartes to Freud. They sought to explain the dichotomy between emotion and reason. They prized reason and believed emotions were the vestiges of primitive man. And needed to be tamed. Because modern brainwave mapping shows our third baseman is engaging the emotional centers of the brain ,He sure as heck doesn't have time for analytical reasoning. This is an athletic field not a classroom. The modern ' the mind is a computer' model breaks down because it cannot account for tremendous amounts of adrenaline. Likewise cognitive therapy models can't explain it because there was no time to run the programming code of rational analytical reasoning.
I tend to believe that sports are played in the old brain of primitive man.

 

[Lynne]

I think our conscious thought draws from all our senses not words. We express thoughts through words. Obviously we do think in words but it is not the seat of thought. If we had no word language we would probably think in mental pictures. Which we all do anyway.