The Science
The science behind
the practice.
Better preparation.
More purposeful practice.
Discover four research-backed principles that inform how we train imagination, attention, learning and confidence. Then see how we put them to work at TAM.
Explore the findingsThe research foundations
Understand what
you’re training.
Clear ideas. Practical applications. Explore the research, then connect it to the work you do as an actor.
Imagination
Mental rehearsal, sensory detail and the way we prepare for action.
ExploreFocus & state
Attention, breathing and our physical readiness to work.
ExploreLearning & repetition
Active recall and regular practice that give learning a place to grow.
ExploreConfidence
Achievable goals and experience of your own progress.
ExploreFinding 01 · Imagination
Imagination is part
of preparation.
Make it specific.
Explore the places, relationships and circumstances of the role.
Rehearse the process.
Give attention to the choices and actions involved in your preparation.
Put it into practice.
Bring those discoveries into the scene and explore what becomes useful.
In SDA, this work comes together through The Core™: one developing preparation process: Read → See → Tell. Begin with the script’s facts, build the character’s world in imagination, then rehearse the inner story. In performance, you return to the scripted dialogue and your scene partner.
The Core · A preparation process
Preparation supports the scene. Performance stays alive to the other actor.
Finding 02 · Focus & state
How you prepare
matters too.
Focus.
Practise returning to the person, the circumstances and the next action.
Research context: Mrazek and colleagues tested a two-week mindfulness course using cognitive tasks. [3]
State.
Notice your breath and physical readiness as part of preparing to work.
Research context: Balban and colleagues studied daily five-minute breathing exercises over one month. [4]
We help you notice a pattern, reconsider what a situation means and practise a more useful response. For example: treat a redirect as useful information for your next take. Research on changing an interpretation—called reappraisal—helps explain why this can affect how we feel. [8]
A member’s experience
“I’ve learned to trust my instincts, stop overthinking and become a more confident, proactive actor.”
Actor · TAM member
Read the review on Skool ↗
Finding 03 · Learning & repetition
Give learning
a place to grow.
Bring it back.
Return to what you have learned and practise using it actively.
Keep showing up.
Give preparation and training a regular place in your week.
Training you can revisit sits alongside opportunities to work: scenes, self tapes, feedback and regular sessions. Choose when and where you will practise. Research on implementation intentions suggests that a specific plan can help turn an intention into action. [9]
Make room for the work
One cue.One action.
Repeat.
“After my morning coffee,
I’ll spend ten minutes on my scene.”
Put it into practice
Make the work part
of your week.
Explore The System.
See how Craft, Mind and Business fit together—and where SDA and The Core sit within your training.
Explore The SystemPractise inside TAM.
Find the membership that gives you the training, practice and support for your next step.
Explore Membership
A member’s experience
“TAM has given me a place to keep learning, keep challenging myself and most importantly, keep showing up.”
Actor · TAM member
Read the review on Skool ↗
Finding 04 · Confidence
Build confidence
on real progress.
Small, achievable goals helped children learning maths improve their skills and their belief in what they could do. Progress gave their confidence something concrete to build on. [7]
A clear next step.
Choose something specific to work on.
A chance to practise.
Put that choice into action and receive feedback.
Progress you can see.
Recognise what changed and decide what comes next.
We want confidence to have something to stand on: experience of preparing, doing the work and developing over time.
Understand it. Practise it.
Make it yours.
Research gives us useful principles. Training is where you explore how to use them. At TAM, we bring the work back to the actor, the scene and the next practical step.
The research
Take a closer look.
These independent studies support principles used in our training. Applying them to acting is TAM’s interpretation; the complete TAM system and SDA have not been directly tested in these studies. Open each source for the finding and its original setting.
Read the 24-second overview
Imagination: rehearse the process and make the character’s world specific. Focus and state: prepare your attention and notice what you bring to the work. Learning: practise, recall and repeat. Confidence: choose a next step, practise and review. Research informs the practice. Your training puts it to work.
01Mental rehearsal: prepare the process
Pham, L. B. & Taylor, S. E. (1999). From Thought to Action: Effects of Process-Versus Outcome-Based Mental Simulations on Performance. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 25(2), 250–260.
What the study found. College students who mentally rehearsed the process of preparing for an exam studied more and achieved better grades. Planning and reduced anxiety helped account for the effect.
Where it was tested. College students preparing for an exam; the benefit came from rehearsing the preparation process.
Read the study02Sensory imagery: imagination can influence perception
Pearson, J., Clifford, C. W. G. & Tong, F. (2008). The functional impact of mental imagery on conscious perception. Current Biology, 18(13), 982–986.
What the study found. Imagining a visual pattern influenced which competing pattern participants subsequently perceived. The effect depended on the imagined pattern's location and orientation.
Where it was tested. Laboratory tasks using simple visual patterns; the result concerns perception following mental imagery.
Read the study03Attention: practise returning to the task
Mrazek, M. D., Franklin, M. S., Phillips, D. T., Baird, B. & Schooler, J. W. (2013). Mindfulness Training Improves Working Memory Capacity and GRE Performance While Reducing Mind Wandering. Psychological Science, 24(5), 776–781.
What the study found. A randomised study found that a two-week mindfulness course reduced distracting thoughts and improved working-memory and reading-comprehension performance.
Where it was tested. A two-week mindfulness course assessed through working-memory and reading-comprehension tasks.
Read the study04State: breathing can influence how we feel
Balban, M. Y. et al. (2023). Brief structured respiration practices enhance mood and reduce physiological arousal. Cell Reports Medicine, 4(1), 100895.
What the study found. In a remote randomised study, daily five-minute breathing practices over one month improved mood. Exhale-focused cyclic sighing showed particular benefits for positive mood and reduced breathing rate relative to mindfulness meditation.
Where it was tested. A one-month trial of specific five-minute breathing practices, measuring mood and physiological arousal.
Read the study05Learning: bring the work back into use
Karpicke, J. D. & Blunt, J. R. (2011). Retrieval practice produces more learning than elaborative studying with concept mapping. Science, 331(6018), 772–775.
What the study found. Students who practised retrieving material from memory learned science texts better than students using elaborative concept mapping, including on questions requiring comprehension and inference.
Where it was tested. Experiments learning science texts and testing understanding and recall.
Read the study06Consistency: give practice a regular place
Lally, P., van Jaarsveld, C. H. M., Potts, H. W. W. & Wardle, J. (2010). How are habits formed: Modelling habit formation in the real world. European Journal of Social Psychology, 40(6), 998–1009.
What the study found. Volunteers repeated a chosen everyday behaviour in a consistent context over twelve weeks. Reported automaticity generally increased, with substantial variation between people.
Where it was tested. A 12-week observational study of everyday habits. The time taken to develop automaticity varied widely.
Read the study07Confidence: build evidence of your progress
Bandura, A. & Schunk, D. H. (1981). Cultivating competence, self-efficacy, and intrinsic interest through proximal self-motivation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 41(3), 586–598.
What the study found. In an experiment with forty children learning arithmetic, near-term subgoals supported skill development, perceived capability and interest more effectively than distant goals or no goals.
Where it was tested. A small educational experiment with children learning arithmetic and working towards achievable goals.
Read the study08Meaning: explore a different interpretation
Gross, J. J. (1998). Antecedent- and response-focused emotion regulation: Divergent consequences for experience, expression, and physiology. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74(1), 224–237.
What the study found. In an experiment with 120 participants watching a distressing film, reinterpreting the film reduced reported disgust. Suppressing outward expression had a different pattern of emotional and physiological effects.
Where it was tested. A laboratory film-viewing task comparing changing an interpretation with suppressing emotional expression.
Read the study09Follow-through: plan when and where
Gollwitzer, P. M. & Brandstätter, V. (1997). Implementation intentions and effective goal pursuit. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 73(1), 186–199.
What the research found. Studies examined plans connecting a chosen situation with a specific action. Forming these implementation intentions helped participants follow through on intended goals in the settings studied.
Where it was tested. Goal-pursuit experiments examining plans that specify when, where and how to act.
Read the research
A member’s experience
“With Derek’s guidance, and the encouragement of the TAM family, I’ve grown so much both as an actor and as a person.”
Actor · TAM member
Read the review on Skool ↗
