Psychophysiological Correlates of Representations of Creative and Non- Creative Movements in Subjects with Various Levels of Dance Skills

The paper focuses attention on the importance of studying the psychophysiological correlates of the representations of creative and non-creative movements in respondents with various levels of dance skills. The developed methodological tools and the results obtained can be readily used in the development of methods and techniques of professional training of dancers, as well as psychological and psychophysiological methods and techniques for the development of creativity in dancers, and carrying out a dance-expressive psychotherapy. The authors described the methodology and procedure of the empirical study. The study involved 60 persons at the age from 18 to 25. The sample included 20 professional dancers with a high level of skill in variety and sports dance; 20 novice dancers with a basic experience in the field of variety and sports dance; 20 persons without any experience in dance or other sports (control group) at a professional or amateur level. In this study, the respondents had to represent creative (an original dance improvisation) and non-creative (a bridge and somersaults back) movements. The study used the method of electroencephalography. The authors studied the strength and character of the distribution of coherence connections of the cerebral cortex in respondents when representing the movements. The results of the empirical study made it possible to distinguish psycho-physiological correlates of representation of the movements. The authors differentiated these correlates as follows: the main, which manifested themselves in all the respondents of the study, and do not depend on the nature of movements; variable, which reflect the level of professional dancing skills of respondents and the nature of the represented movement. High intra- and interhemispheric coherence in the theta, alpha1, and alpha2 ranges are the main components of the psycho-physiological correlates. Among the variable components the study revealed the EEG pattern in the beta range on the “axis of creativity” (between the front divisions of the right hemisphere and posterior divisions of the left one) in professional dancers when representing the creative movements.