From stress to resource: embodied cognitive pathways linking dance competence and psychological resilience

Dance training presents a distinctive stress-resource context in which physical, cognitive, and emotional demands co-exist with potential adaptive benefits. However, the body-mediated cognitive processes through which perceived dance competence relates to psychological resilience remain underexplored. This study examined whether perceived dance competence was associated with psychological resilience through dimensions of embodied cognition among undergraduate dance students.

A total of 303 Chinese undergraduate dance students completed self-report measures of perceived dance competence, embodied cognition (motor control, negative experience processing, bodily self-representation, cognitive flexibility, and mind-body integration), and psychological resilience. Confirmatory factor analyses and structural equation modeling with bias-corrected bootstrap estimation were used to examine the proposed association model.

Perceived dance competence was positively associated with all five embodied cognition dimensions. Cognitive flexibility (β = 0.356, p < 0.001) and bodily self-representation (β = 0.301, p < 0.001) showed the strongest positive associations with psychological resilience, whereas negative experience processing and mind-body integration were not significant predictors. The total indirect association between perceived dance competence and psychological resilience through embodied cognition dimensions was significant (β = 0.287, 95% CI [0.20, 0.39], p < 0.001), while the direct association was weak and non-significant (β = -0.012, p = 0.794).

These findings suggest that body-mediated cognitive processes, particularly cognitive flexibility and bodily self-representation, may be relevant to psychological resilience in dance education contexts. However, the cross-sectional design, self-report methodology, newly developed or adapted instruments, and suboptimal incremental model fit warrant cautious interpretation. Future longitudinal, experimental, and measurement-validation studies are needed to test the temporal and causal assumptions of the proposed model.