Copyrightⓒ2017 KAHPERD
International Journal of Human Movement Science, 2017, Vol. 11, No. 2, 49-58
https://doi.org/10.23949/ijhms.2017.12.11.2.4 ISSN 1976-4391(Print) / ISSN 2586-078X(Online)
The Effects of Positive and Negative Feedback on Dance Learning
Hyun-Ju Jeon ․ Jung-hee Baek Hanyang University, South Korea
Sangjoon An* Korea Institute of Industrial Technology, South Korea
Abstract
This study compared the effects of positive and negative feedback provided to students learning dance. 28 female students
learned to perform the traditional Korean drum dance called Jangguchum, in 60 sessions over two weeks. Half of students
received a positive feedback on their performance during the learning phase, while the other half were given a negative
feedback. Using the criterion for evaluation standard of Korean dance, experts rated the students’ performances 3 times;
before the first session, immediately after the last session, and a week later. The results showed that the effects of positive
feedback for performance are greater than that of negative feedback in learning dance.
Key words: Motor learning, Positive feedback, Negative feedback, Dance learning effect
INTRODUCTION
Learning to dance requires knowledge of the
appropriate movements as well as repetitive practice.
Errors corrected at the initial stages lead to
successful learning. In dance lessons, the instructor
provides information about the movement patterns as
well as about the meaning of the movements
(Krasnow & Wilmerding, 2015). The essence of
dance learning is to ensure that students master the
overall techniques and synthesize the visual,
kinesiological, cognitive, and emotional information.
In order to achieve this purpose, dance instructors
utilize special behaviors or language to emphasize
specific movements and emotions (Ashford, Bennett,
& Davids, 2006; Overby & Bradley, 2007).
Dance is physical in nature, so guided
manipulation to achieve and feel the correct
movement is an important type of feedback in the
dance classroom. The dance teacher uses guided
manipulation as a means of communicating posture
or movement changes to students. The teacher’s
choice of feedback stes the atmosphere of the class
(Kissing & Jay, 2003).
Providing students with feedback on their
performance is a very effective method to enhance
learning, minimize the differences between the goals
and actual performance, in a rather short time
(Eaves, Breslin, & Schaik, 2011). Offering feedback
to the classrooms is much like providing solutions
for various questions that learners may have
regarding their dance performance (Schmidt & Lee,
2014).
It is important to examine what type of verbal
feedback improves the quality of practice and the
effects of learning in providing information about
characteristics of motion and continuity upon
movement completions during dance performance.
The perceptions of praise and teachers' invested time
were positively linked with the dependent variables,
whereas encouragement and technical information
50 Hyun-Ju Jeon ․ Jung-hee Baek ․ SangjoonAn
Characteristics
Group
Age, yr.Dance
Experience, yr.Height, cm Weight, kg BMI, kg/m2 Performance, No.
M ± SD M ± SD M ± SD M ± SD M ± SD M ± SD
Positive (n = 14) 21.86 ± 0.36 6.71 ± 2.16 162.21 ± 3.42 49.36 ± 3.93 18.75 ± 1.31 4.71 ± 3.10
Negative (n = 14) 21.93 ± 0.47 6.93 ± 3.17 162.32 ± 2.46 53.07 ± 3.73 20.13 ± 1.13 4.79 ± 2.08
Note: — M = mean; SD = standard deviation; BMI = body mass index.
Table 1. The general characteristics of participants
and criticism were negatively linked (Nicaise, Bois,
Fairclough, & Amorose, 2007). But, students’
perceptions of physical education feedback, that is
effects on performance and psychological responses
are mainly focus on mental variables, such as
intrinsic motivation, learning environment (Burnett,
2002; Koka & Hein, 2003; Standage, Duda, &
Ntoumanis, 2006). For over a decade, in motor
learning as a sports science, few researchers have
verified the motivational factors that affect motor
skill learning (Chen, 2001; Chiviacowsky & Wulf,
2005, 2007; Wulf, Chiviacowsky, & Lewthwaite,
2010). However, most of this research was done in
the context of sports science and there is a paucity of
studies on the effects of different types of feedback
in dance learning. Unlike sport learning which
concentrates mainly on the motor aspects of the
movements, dance learning contains many emotional
elements that are vital to the learning of dance
movements. Therefore, positive and negative
feedback may have different effects in dance
learning than in sport learning.
In order to provide a basic foundation for
effective dance learning programs, this study
intended to compare the effects of positive and
negative feedback on the performance of the
expressive and functional elements of dance.
Methods
Subjects
Twenty eight female students (mean age = 21.9
years, SD = 0.42) majoring in Korean dance at a
university in Korea participated in the experiment.
Their mean dance experience was 6.8 years.
Fourteen students were assigned to a positive
feedback program and the other 14 for a negative
feedback program. The classification of the two
groups was followed after pre-evaluation for even
student’s level through the class alternation
sequentially to two different groups. And all
participants have similar previous experience of
dance, age, performance, and so on (Table 1). The
participants have no experience of similar
experimentation before, and they engaged without
preliminary knowledge of the experimental purpose.
Also, this experiment had an IRB (Institutional
Review Board; IRB) approval from Hanyang
University Seoul Hospital.
Task
Korean traditional dance shares some similarity
with form of dance known as contemporary and
lyrical. Moves follow a curvilinear path with little
short term repetition. The dancer's legs and feet are
The Effects of Positive and Negative Feedback on Dance Learning 51
Dongsalpuli 3
Beatⓘ ⓘ ⓘ ⦶ Ο
iΟ
Gideong Gung Gideong Gung Gideong GungGideong
Gung
Gideong
Deong
Kung
Gitta
Kung
(forward)
Right footRight foot From right
foot side step
Feet
together
Left foot Left foot
Dance
notation
Dance
movement
ⓛ Twist steps from the right foot ② Do side step ③ Step left foot to right, twist back the body, look
forward, and have your body facing forward. The hand movement is as follows: During ①, the right
hand does armpit movement and does a strong movement in a mood pushing sideway.
Table 2. Movement of the Jangguchum (one movement example, in 10 movements practiced)
often entirely concealed by a billowing hanbok.
Emotional attributes of the dances include both
somberness and joy. The dancer must embody the
fluid motion that surges through the traditional
music that the dancers perform to. Korean traditional
dance is often performed to Korean traditional
music, which includes traditional drums, flutes, and
more. The music is what upholds the dance and the
dancer is the tool that shows the music in physical
form.
The task to be learned in this study comprised ten
movements (Dongsalpuli) of the Korean traditional
drum dance, Jangguchum, which takes roughly 1
min. 30 sec. Ten motions of Dongsalpuli have
various movements from small to big with feet and
hands, and also have a wide range of movement
space (Park, 2006). Table 2 shows one dance
movement in the 10 movements. And it is consist of
rhythm, melody of Janggu, moving line, and
movements with feet and arms. The Janggu drum,
52 Hyun-Ju Jeon ․ Jung-hee Baek ․ SangjoonAn
i.e., used in the traditional music of Korea is shown
in Fig. 1. Dongsalpuli consists of one tempo with ♩ = 105 ~ 115, 4 beat-rhythm with 2 smaller
beat-rhythm (2-sobak 4-bak rhythm; ♩ × 4). This
tempo is repeated with rhythm♩ /♪♪/♩ /♪♪. The
period of breath in Jangguchum is highly related to
the rhythm. To use highly skilled techniques, one
must be able to use inhalation, exhalation and
breathe hold to be in synchronization with basic
rhythm, and must be able to use variation and
transformation. Also, deep breath is used in slow
rhythms and is represented through abdominal
breathing. Shallow breath is used in faster rhythms
and is done by thoracic breathing.
Figure 2. The Janggu & Jangguchum
Feedback
The specific phrases conveying positive and
negative feedback that were provided for each part
of the dance are presented in Table 3. To the positive
feedback group the feedback with praise and
approval through linguistic feedback was provided
only when the exact performance is carried out on
the evaluation list for movement order, rhythm, feet,
breath, harmony, and so on. In cases of negative
feedback group, the feedback with criticism,
correction of mistake was provided whenever the
error occurred. There were no perfect cases for the
test without negative feedback in this study.
Measures
To evaluate dance performance we used the
standard evaluation criterion for general Korean
dance (Baek & Jeon, 2011). We further discussed
participants’ performance with professors at the
Department of Dance and with professional dance
instructors, in order to improve and correct our
evaluations. The overall harmony was the main
criteria for evaluating items. Included the sequence
of movements, the strike points and sound of the
Janggu, the degree of coordination between the head,
torso, arms, and legs, the rhythmical sense, the
moving line (i.e., presence or absence of errors in
direction and the distance of the movements), and
accuracy of the body movements (the appropriate
use of stepping, breathing, and joints). A 3-point
scale per item as shown in Table 4 was used. An
internal consistency reliability test of the evaluation
questions showed high reliability; Cronbach's α were
0.865 at pre-test, 0.869 at post-test, and 0.904 at
retention test. The evaluation was done by a judging
panel consisting of five experts with a University
degree (major in Korean dance) with 15 yr. of
dancing career and five or more years of teaching
experience. Also all the judges are teachers in
universities and have experiences in all the
The Effects of Positive and Negative Feedback on Dance Learning 53
Items Feedback Types of Language
Sequence
Positive Good remembering the order, Well done, Excellent
NegativeThat’s not the order, why can’t you remember, the order is all messed up,
bad, not good
Movement 1
(beat, noise)
Positive I can hear it well, Great beat timing, Joyous, That’s beautiful noise
NegativeThat sounds strange, That’s the wrong beat, I can’t listen to it, Terrible,
disappointing, no, upset
Movement 2
(head, trunk)
Positive Good head and body positioning, right , pretty
NegativeThat’s not the right direction for your head and body, Wrong, I can’t look
at it, that’s strange, poor, disturbed
Movement 3
(arm, leg)
Positive Good arm and leg positioning, Great form, Looks good, beautiful, Correct
NegativeYour arm and legs look strange, Terrible, Looks awful, What’s that, It’s
weak, not good, a great distress
RhythmPositive Excellent rhythm, Sounds great, Excellent, Joyous, Good
Negative No rhythm, Sounds awful, Don’t do that, No, Gloomy
PathwayPositive Locomotion That’s great, Excellent, Well done, Beautiful, Looks good
Negative What’s that?, Strange, Terrible, Looks awful, No, very poor
Foot placementPositive Excellent foot placement, Good basics, Beautiful, Good
Negative Bad foot placement, No basics, Not pretty, Don’t do it like that
Breathing
Positive Good breathing, Excellent, deep and accurate
NegativeBad breathing, You can’t do it, Strange, What’s wrong with your breathing,
dislike, very weak, infuriating
Usage of jointsPositive Good use of the joints, Accurate, Beautiful, Excellent, Looks good
Negative Bad use of joints, Strange, Looks terrible, No, Unhappy
Harmony
Positive Overall it looks harmonized, Nice flow, Beautiful, Joyous, Well done
NegativeOverall it looks not in harmony, The movements are not flowing, Looks
terrible, I don’t want to look or hear it, I’m so moody
Table 3. Feedback types
evaluation elements, and thus they can observe all
the performance properly when evaluating the
participants.
Procedure
The Jangguchum was demonstrated to all
participants ten times. Then, a pre-test of the
Jangguchum was conducted for each participant.
One test assistant has various experiences on this
study’s movement skills and is an expert who can
carry out every item in this research. The criteria of
the evaluation were not provided to anyone except
for the assistants and the judges. The same assistant
showed the demonstration of the test case and
provided positive and negative feedbacks, and the
practice and the evaluation are done in the same
dance rehearsal room. The evaluation has done
individually and the rest of the students waited in a
different place. Following the pre-test, participants
were split into the positive and negative feedback
groups. A total of 60 trials (10 trials per day, 3 times
a week, for 2 weeks.) of the Jangguchum were then
practiced by each participant with the instructor
providing either a positive or a negative feedback.
Two to three types of positive and negative feedback
were given on performance results by individual
right after the 2nd, 4th, 6th, 8th, and 10th trials each
54 Hyun-Ju Jeon ․ Jung-hee Baek ․ SangjoonAn
analysis items evaluation standard score
1 Sequence Exact – 3 points
1 ~ 2 errors
– 2 points
3 or more errors
– 1 point
Evaluate if the movements were done
in sequence.
2 Movement 1
(beat, noise)
Exact – 3 points
1 ~ 2 errors
– 2 points
3 or more errors
– 1 point
Evaluate the strength of using muscle
and coordination degree of body parts
for movement.Movement 2
(head, trunk)
Movement 3
(arm, leg)
3 Rhythm Exact – 3 points
1 ~ 2 errors
– 2 points
3 or more errors
– 1 point
Evaluate the exactness of rhythm and
accordance of movements with it.
4 Pathway
(motion direction)
Exact – 3 points
1 ~ 2 errors
– 2 points
3 or more errors
– 1 point
Evaluate if the exact pathway was
followed.
5 Accuracy of
body
Foot Placement Exact – 3 points
1 ~ 2 errors
– 2 points
3 or more errors
– 1 point
Evaluate if foot placement, breathing,
and usage of joints as characters of
Korean Dance were done exactly.Breathing
Usage of Joints
6 Harmony Exact – 3 points
1 ~ 2 errors
– 2 points
3 or more errors
– 1 point
Evaluate if the entire movements were
done in harmony.
Table 4. Standard evaluation criterion
day. Practice was given to each team organizing
three to four students and one group consists of four
teams. Each team had its own practice time about 15
min. The practice time of the two groups in total was
about 2 hr. a day. On the last day of practice, a
post-test was conducted individually using the same
method as the pre-test. Seven days later, without
practicing in the interim, a retention test was
conducted in which participants were instructed to
perform the same dance in the same situation. There
were ten criteria (sequence, sound, head/trunk
movements, arm/leg movements, rhythm, pathway,
foot placement, breathing, usage of joints, and
harmony) for the evaluation. Each element is given
three points in total of 30 points. For objective
evaluations, the reliability of the evaluation and also
the reliability between the judges were analyzed.
Statistical Analysis
The design of this study experiment was based
upon the independent variables of positive and
The Effects of Positive and Negative Feedback on Dance Learning 55
Variable
Positive
(n=14)
Negative
(n=14)Source of
VariationF P η2
M±SD M±SD
PE at
Pre-test 11.89±2.54 12.75±2.82 Group 5.50 .037* .314
Post-test 23.89±2.94 20.46±2.07 Time 235.18 .000*** .951
Retention 27.18±2.60 22.18±2.60 Group×Time 13.65 .001** .532
Note. — M = mean; SD = standard deviation; PE = Performance effect; *p < .05, **p < .01, ***p < .001.
Table 5. Performance effect of the positive and negative feedback group
negative feedback (group) for performance results
and the dependent variables of times(pre, post,
retention). All analyses of this study were conducted
with SPSS (Version 18.0; SPSS, Inc., Chicago, IL)
and the means and standard deviations were
calculated in all data. Correlation analysis was
conducted to verify the reliability between the
judges. Repeated Measures ANOVA (RMANOVA)
to check out the performance effects on every test
stage for each group was performed. Also a post-hoc
test, Dunnett test, was conducted to find a point of
time that the difference between two groups is
occurred. The level of significance is set at p < .05
for all differences.
Results
The learning effect was significantly difference
between three different test times (p < .001), and also
had a meaningful difference between two groups (p <
.05). There was correlation between group and time,
according to the time change of patterns for learning
effect (p < .01). It was inferred that two groups
started to differ at the time of the post-test as shown
in Fig. 2. In the pre-test, the negative feedback had a
higher point, but at the post-test and retention, the
positive feedback showed much higher points than
negative feedback. To look into how the learning
effects change in the next of this test period, the
future effect trend and found a linear trend according
to time was significant at p < .001, and the learning
effects due to correlation between time and group
(time × group) had also significance probability of p
< .001. The change of patterns in learning effect
according to time is different for positive feedback
groups and negative feedback groups. Therefore, the
positive feedback groups can be predicted more
consistent learning effects compared to the negative
groups as shown in Table 5.
Discussion
This study had been started on the assumption that
positive feedback is more effective than negative
feedback in dance movement learning. As a result,
the learning effect had a significant difference
between three different test times (p < .001), and
also had a meaningful difference between two
groups (p < .05). There was the correlation between
group and time, due to a change of patterns of
learning effect according to the time (p < .01).
Therefore, the positive feedback group for
performance results represents the greater effects in
dance learning than the negative one.
Korean dance focuses on expressing inner
feelings through outer motions rather than
56 Hyun-Ju Jeon ․ Jung-hee Baek ․ SangjoonAn
performing technical motions. The objectives of
dance movements are artistic rather than just
functional like in sports. Verbal explanation is
essential for artistic expression. To enhance learning
effects of movements to further develop into mature
dance, the interpretation of emotion bestowed with
learners' quality should be clearly conveyed and
instructed through provision of verbal information.
We tend to be sensitive to social feedback or
information resulting from certain tasks after
completion. Recognizing one's performance, whether
it is correct or incorrect and whether it brings good
or bad results, is important in deriving the most
desirable outcome by adjusting further performance.
Showing sensitive responses about performance
results and feedback signals given after performance
is common not only in humans, but also animals.
Effective action, not only a direct reinforcer to
formative action of animals, but also the secondary
reinforcer as the predicted signal of the primary
reinforcer are typical examples (Rescorla, 1979). An
instructor’s feedback is giving the information
regarding a student’s reaction during learning
process given to students in an appropriate manner
for successful learning (Hein & Koka, 2007). Koka
and Hein (2003) categorized feedbacks, in context of
physical education, into positive general feedback,
positive specific feedback, negative nonverbal
feedback, positive nonverbal feedback, and
knowledge of performance feedback. An instructor’s
positive feedback and interaction with students affect
the will of students who put in effort to enhance their
performance (Koka & Hein, 2005). On the other
hand, students who receive a quantity of negative
feedbacks from their instructor often establish a
negative relationship with the instructor (Burnett,
2002). James (1983) reported that students who
received negative feedback on their physical
performance result had much lower self-concept
compared to the students who didn’t. The students
also showed more interests in positive feedbacks
than negative feedbacks. There’s a saying ‘there’s
nothing more successful than successful experience.’
Positive feedbacks enforcing physical performance
give vitality to one’s action, where negative
feedbacks on failures can give suffering to learners
(Houten, 1980). Mouratidis, Vansteenkiste, Lens, &
Sideridis (2008) also found that positive feedback is
much more beneficial and reinforcing of students’
physical performance.
In case of the group with positive feedback, few
studies show different result from this study. Yeo
and Neal(2006) found that a self-conceit reduce the
outcome. And Jung(2009) insist that the negative
feedback can be stimulation for doing their jobs
between workers. But these studies are not with the
dance motion but a work without a movement. On
the other hand, this study represents the better results
after positive feedback with great performance
during the results with little improvement after
negative feedback. Therefore, the positive feedback
can be affected to the students as a motivation and
encouragement. This helps not only a dancer with
experience but also a beginner.
The results of this study imply that instructor
feedback is an important factor in determining dance
learning. Furthermore, this study presents evidence
that positive feedback can maximize the learning
effects.
1) This study has done with the particular
participants’ development level, learning
The Effects of Positive and Negative Feedback on Dance Learning 57
capabilities, previous experience, and cultural
background. Therefore, the generalization for this
study can’t be constructed. The effect of gender
also was not considered.
2) Teacher’s verbal feedback was limited on task
performance only to positive and negative
feedbacks. The effects of other feedbacks such as
corrective feedback, summary feedback, average
feedback, bandwidth feedback, self-controlled
feedback, etc., and the motivation of participants
were not considered.
3) Because the dancing movements were artistic
expressions, experts’ visual were relied on for
evaluation. To be more objective, sequence,
sound, head/trunk movements, arm/leg
movements, rhythm, pathway, foot placement,
breathing, usage of joints, and harmony aspects
were used for evaluation.
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