DELIBERATE PRACTICE: THE CASE OF THE MUSICIAN

One excellent example of deliberate practice is solitary practice, which successful students use to increase their mastery of new music pieces and techniques. Music teachers typically evaluate students’ current performance at weekly lessons to assess improvement, diagnose weaknesses, and help the student overcome problems by assigning focused practice techniques. We were able to compare several […]

EXPERT vs NOVICE PERFORMANCES

The differences between expert and novice performance cannot be explained by innate differences in basic speed and capacity. They are attributable primarily to complex, highly specialized mechanisms that allow experts to perform at superior levels in representative domain-specific tasks. In fact, the only basic innate difference that has been conclusively shown to differentiate expert and […]

HOW EXPERTS REACH HIGH LEVELS OF PERFORMANCE

Recent reviews (Ericsson, 1996, 1998b, 2001; Ericsson & Lehmann, 1996) dispel the common belief that “talented” expert performers attain very high levels of performance virtually automatically through cumulative domain-related experience. Instead, empirical evidence strongly implies that even the most “talented” individuals in a domain must spend over ten years actively engaging in particular practice activities […]