The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance

More documents

Recommendations

Info

462 the cambridge handbook of expertise and expert performance played through the piece when disinterested in it. Similarly, when the goal is to master a certain piece or a specific difficulty, adults may work hard and use more practice strategies than when they want to enjoy themselves or relax rather than mastering the instrument (Lehmann & Papousek, 2003). The Development of Musical Expertise Stages and Phases Demarcating points along the time line of acquisition of a new skill allows us to better conceptualize the process as a whole, and several stage and phase models have been proposed (see Proctor & Vu, Chapter 15). Fitts and Posner (1967), for example, in their well-known model describe skills as being first cognitive, then associative, and later autonomous, in essence requiring less and less cognitive mediation as skilled performance increases. Similar stages can be identified in Sudnow’s (1993) phenomenological account of his learning to improvise jazz on the piano. First, he had to decide consciously which chord to use next and then how to distribute the chordal notes on the keyboard (voicing). Later his fingers seemed to find the right notes by themselves. Much later, his aesthetic decision of what to play seemed to trigger the correct chord sequences with associated voicings. Whereas the focus of attention in novices is directed toward technical, low-level aspects, experts attend to higherlevel, strategic or aesthetic issues, a finding also demonstrated for composing (Colley, Banton, & Down, 1992) and improvising (Hargreaves, Cork, & Setton, 1991). For many musicians the earlier stages of skill development are successfully completed in (early) childhood. Fitts and Posner’s (1967) model is informative with regard to skill development of an individual, but it neglects the lifespan context. Bloom (1985) explicated how skills develop through life. First, the child is introduced to the domain in an informal phase, and it is here that children in “musical” households may be at an advantage. Then comes a phase during which formal tuition is sought. This stage extends until the young musician makes a full-time commitment to music in order to become a professional. In a later phase, once a professional status has been reached, the expert is working at trying to make a lasting contribution. For a musician, this would entail making sound recordings for major record labels, playing in prestigious concert halls (e.g., Carnegie Hall), or winning certain competitions (e.g., Frederic Chopin International Piano Competition). Vitouch (2005) described in detail how parts of the expertise may get lost in old age – one could call this “de-expertization” – and how experts like the piano soloist Horowitz possibly compensate for it. Interestingly the psychomotor adaptations do not decline inevitably with old age but can be maintained for a long time through continuous practice. Krampe and Ericsson (1996) demonstrated that older pianists were able to counteract losses in motor performance through practice, whereas non-pianists did not show this advantage. However, both groups suffered age-related declines in other cognitive domains (see also Krampe & Charness, Chapter 40). The time needed for experts to develop sufficient skills for a professional career is sometimes estimated to be roughly a decade (Ericsson & Crutcher, 1990). Hayes (1989) demonstrated that this “10-year rule” also applies to composers in classical music, including Mozart. Works from Mozart’s earliest phases were conspicuously underrepresented in selected lists of his recordings. Similarly, Weisberg (1999) demonstrated that it took The Beatles approximately a decade to acquire international reputation. Prior to writing their own songs they covered music by other bands. It is a futile effort to dwell on exact number of years, but it is important to note that even famous exponents of a domain take a long time to acquire their skills. In order to compete successfully for scholarships, prizes, and media attention, instrumentalists in the classical music
domain have to master the most demanding repertoire as teenagers. This requires either an early start for highly competitive instruments (e.g., violin) or the possibility of transfer of knowledge and skills from previously played instruments onto those instrument that do not allow such early start (e.g., string bass, oboe, trombone). Altogether, the development of expert performance can be seen as an adaptation to the typical task constraints of the domain (Ericsson & Lehmann, 1996), involving changes in cognitive, physiological, and perceptual-motor parameters that facilitate superior performance. Cognitive Adaptations Among the cognitive adaptations are aspects of memory and problem solving. The former can be seen in virtually all domains of expertise (Ericsson & Lehmann, 1996). Even when memorization is not their explicit goal, experts tend to have excellent longterm retention for domain-related material. For example, incidental memory for music just played correlated moderately with accompanying ability in classical pianists (Lehmann & Ericsson, 1996). Kauffman and Carlsen (1989) showed that musicians recalled musical material better than nonmusicians, especially when the material was structured according to rules of tonality (see our example concerning savants in later paragraph). Expert-novice differences decreased when tonality rules were violated or when random note sequences had to be recalled. This skill-by-structure interaction, demonstrated also in other domains, documents that experts’ advantages are largely due to their knowledge and how their memory skills have adapted to the structure of the stimuli. Acquired domain knowledge has been the most prominent explanation for the superiority of expert performance. Studies in many different domains showed that the essential factor of development of expertise is the accumulation of increasingly complex patterns in memory. It has been shown that expert knowledge can be retrieved quickly from long-term memory (Ericsson music 463 & Kintsch, 1995). Chaffin and Imreh (2001) showed convincingly how a concert pianist developed sophisticated mental representations with associated retrieval structures that lead to successful performance of the rehearsed piece from memory even under high-stress conditions on stage. In addition, knowledge is represented in an elaborated format that allows quick access to relevant information and supports flexible reactions to domain-specific tasks, for example, in medicine by encapsulation of knowledge in procedural representations of earlier experiences with cases (Boshuizen & Schmidt, 1992). A particularly impressive effect of the impact of knowledge for musical performance was found in studies with autistic savants. Despite the cognitive and communicative limitations that prevent them from functioning normally in everyday contexts, some autistic savants have exceptional musical skills and can play back music after only a few hearings. It can be demonstrated that these skills are based on knowledge-related generative processes (Miller, 1999; Sloboda, Hermelin, & O’Connor, 1985). When confronted with atonal music, the savants fail to imitate music but simply play haphazardly. Obviously, familiarity with the material and the genre mediates memory performance (Charness, Clifton, & MacDonald, 1988). The phenomenon of savants’ music memory demonstrates that making use of one’s knowledge about the structure of the stimulus is a quick and automatic process. Specialized knowledge of musical timbre and pitch even impacts early stages of perceptual processing that are not accessible to consciousness (Besson, 1997). The study of individuals’ cognitive representation of musical structure is important for understanding how music performance works (Palmer, 1997). It helps to understand why certain mistakes happen, and in which wayagood use of the knowledge can be supported. But also from an educational point of view it is relevant to know how different learning processes or learning methods may result in different representations (Gruhn & Rauscher, 2002).
Page 1 and 2: Research Approaches to Individual D
Page 3 and 4: triggered by Ericsson, Krampe, and
Page 5: Chaffin, Imreh, and Crawford (2002)
Page 9 and 10: thumb (Elbert, Pantev, Wienbruch, R
Page 11 and 12: for theories previously developed i
Page 13 and 14: Jørgensen, H. (1997). Time for pra

The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?