ABSTRACT
This chapter considers findings from behavioural and movement science, relate them to an established model from social cognitive psychology, suggest relationships to theatre practice and training and propose avenues for future research. It suggests that the capacity forms the basis of our feeling that someone has a good sense of timing. Affect is the most basic form of feeling. It is, very simply, the often unconscious sense that something is either good or bad. The sense of good or bad is related to homeostasis, the feeling that students psychological and physiological well-being is paramount. Clearly, feelings of good or bad are not always and only internal: they are social. The chapter looks at a range of evidence in support of an objective, or at least psychologically sufficient, concept of ‘good timing’ derived from the three-second window of the psychological present, and subject to the constraints of the principle of smoothness.
