Mental Practice Essay

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While mental practice has been shown to benefit learning amongst musicians, the efficacy of mental practice depends on a number of factors, pertaining to both the task itself and the musicians’ abilities. In a meta-analytic study by Driskell et al. (1994) result supported that while mental practice does have a significant effect on performance, the effect is not as strong as that of physical practice. Driskell et al. (1994) also found that a range of variables impact the effectively of mental rehearsal, it was found that tasks which required greater cognitive ability had an increased use mental rehearsal, while it was also proposed that while musicians with greater expertise found equal benefit from mental versus physical tasks, those they …show more content…

Schuster et al. (2011) focused on how best to implement mental rehearsal, taking into consideration a range of strategies and variables, concluding that in order to receive the most effective results, three mental imagery training sessions should be implemented per week, though this number was also dependent on the length of the sessions as well, suggesting the most effective amount of mental imagery trials per training session was no more than two per minute. A significant finding that should be taken into consideration on whether musicians can benefit from mental rehearsal strategies is a decline in the positive benefits of mental-rehearsal over time, suggesting that if mental rehearsal was to be implemented it should be done so through a refresher training as opposed to a continuous strategy. Driskell et al (1994) also provided empirical evidence for optimal duration of mental rehearsal strategies, suggesting that shorter sessions may be more beneficial as lengthier one’s may lead to loss of concentration, with an optimal duration being 20 minutes. Beyond loss of concentration other negative affects that may factor into the relatively short optimal duration is boredom, due to the previously mentioned lack of

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