Captain Psychology

by

Practice

Here are 5 things you need remember from this class session:

  • novice
  • expert
  • mass
  • distributed
  • deliberate

If “practice makes perfect” why aren’t we perfect. It turns out that it is not as easy as the motto suggests. Although we don’t know how people become experts, we know what experts do. With a little mental gymnastics, we think we know how you can become an expert, and it does involve practice.

 

Terms

  • absolute pitch
  • age begin
  • albino sniper
  • algorithm
  • amount of long term practice
  • amount of knowledge
  • amount of practice
  • amount of practice over years
  • amount of practice per day
  • analogical reasoning
  • availability of strategies
  •  Baddely & Longman (1978) (typists)
  • blocking, stage movements, cue-to-cue (Q2Q)
  • breadth-first search
  • Chase & Simon (1973) (chess)
  • Chi (1977) (chess)
  • chunking
  • common mistakes
  • context-dependent memory
  • control strategy
  • data structures
  • delayed gratification
  • deliberate practice
  • demonstrable
  • depth-first search
  • distributed practice
  • domain specificity
  • domain-specific tasks
  • dress rehearsal
  • dry tech
  • Ebbinghaus
  • effort
  • encoding specificity principle
  • engagement
  • entorhinal cortex
  • Ericsson and Polson (JC, a waiter)
  • Ericsson, K. Anders (deliberate practice)
  • expanded rehearsal strategy
  • expert
  • feedback
  • final review
  • genetic factor
  • genetics
  • goal directed
  • goals
  • heuristic
  • Hippocampus
  • immediate feedback
  • knowledge
  • knowledge amount
  • knowledge content
  • knowledge structure
  • Larkin, McDermott, Simon & Simon (1980) (Expert problem solving)
  • limited sessions
  • Loftus & Palmer (1974) (memory)
  • massed practice
  • maximal performance
  • mental rehearsal
  • mental representation
  • Misinformation Effect
  • monitoring
  • motivation
  • Noh theater (Japanese theater)
  • number of chunks
  • number of errors
  • observable data
  • organization
  • pace
  • part practice
  • performance
  • perirhinal cortex
  • perseverance
  • play
  • post-encoding distortion
  • post-encoding distortion sensitivity
  • practice
  • practice as maintenance
  • predicting moves
  • problem solving
  • qualitative differences
  • recall
  • regular sessions
  • rehearsal
  • repetition
  • representation of knowledge
  • Rhinal cortices (surround hippocampus)
  • rote learning
  • run-throughs
  • schema development
  • segmentation
  • sensitivity to context
  • serial position effect
  • size of chunks
  • solution speed
  • solution time
  • solving problem backward
  • solving problem forward
  • source confusion
  • spaced practice
  • specialized knowledge
  • state-dependent memory
  • strategy
  • strategy & knowledge
  • subgoals
  • syntax
  • talent
  • target directed
  • tech rehearsal
  • textbook physics problem
  • Tulving & Thompson (1973) (encoding conditions)
  • wedding rehearsal
  • work
  • working memory
  • Ye & Salvendy (C programmers)

Quiz

1. To become an expert it is good to:

  • a. spend 10 years learning
  • b. practice every day
  • c. start young
  • d. all of the above

 

2. Experts have:

  • a. less specific knowledge
  • b. larger chunks
  • c. more chunks
  • d. all of the above

3. How much practice gives you the best results in the shortest amount of time:

  • a. 1 session, 1 hour per day
  • b. 2 sessions, 1 hour each
  • c. 1 session, 3 hours per day
  • d. 2 sessions, 2 hours each

4. Distributed practice is also called:

  • a. thoughtful practice
  • b. massed practice
  • c. spaced practice
  • d. solo practice

5. Which is great for immediate gains:

  • a. deliberate practice
  • b. massed practice
  • c. spaced practice
  • d. mental practice

Answers

1. To become an expert it is good to:

  • a. spend 10 years learning
  • b. practice every day
  • c. start young
  • d. all of the above

2. Experts have:

  • a. less specific knowledge
  • b. larger chunks
  • c. more chunks
  • d. all of the above

3. How much practice gives you the best results in the shortest amount of time:

  • a. 1 session, 1 hour per day
  • b. 2 sessions, 1 hour each
  • c. 1 session, 3 hours per day
  • d. 2 sessions, 2 hours each

4. Distributed practice is also called:

  • a. thoughtful practice
  • b. massed practice
  • c. spaced practice
  • d. solo practice

5. Which is great for immediate gains:

  • a. deliberate practice
  • b. massed practice
  • c. spaced practice
  • d. mental practice

 

 

Notes

Here are my notes on this topic:

  • novice
  • expert
  • mass
  • distributed
  • deliberate

 

EXPERT

 

  • Expertise research can only show how experts perform
  • Doesn’t tell how become experts
  • Maximal performance
    • future international-level performers are not randomly assigned to their training condition
    • cannot rule out the possibility that there is something different about those individuals who ultimately reach expert-level performance
  • Talent
    • evidence for the talent position is relatively weak
    • individual difference ability characteristics influence skill acquisition
    • general intelligence is a good predictor of performance on novel tasks
    • at least in the initial phases of training
  • Talent might be:
    • genetic factor
    • motivational factors may be genetically influenced
  • Experts
    • Solve problems faster than novices
    • Have better memory for meaningful information
    • Mostly qualitative differences
  • Expertise In General
    • Expertise is mainly the
      • organization &
      • representation of knowledge
    • Observable data
      • doing of something
    • Combines strategy & knowledge
    • Not as much about
      • amount of knowledge
      • availability of strategies
    • Try to organize facts into a mental representation
  • Expert: How differ from novice?
  • 20 characteristics…
  • 1. More knowledge
    • Children are universal novices
    • Chase and Simon estimated expert chess players have a vocabulary of up to 50,000 patterns representing familiar configurations of chess pieces
  • 2. More specialized knowledge
    • 10-year-old chess players
    • Can recall more chess pieces correctly than adults who used to play chess when they were younger
    • Can recall less digits than adults
    • Chi (1977)
      • Typically acquired through practice
      • Produces a measurable increase in performance
  • 3. Chunk information differently
    • Chess
    • Chase & Simon (1973)
      • Expert Chess Players
      • Not better recall of random chess positions
      • Better recall of meaningful chess positions
      • Expert: How differ from novice?
    • Computer programmers
      • Ye & Salvendy (C programmers)
    • Knowledge is composed of
    • A. Knowledge structure
      • The way knowledge pieces are organized and interrelated
      • Examples: production rules, frames, scripts?
    • B. Knowledge content
      • What is encoded and understood
      • Computer programming examples
      • syntax
      • data structures
      • algorithms
    • C. Control strategy
      • How knowledge is accessed and used
      • Examples: top-down strategy, bottom-up strategy, opportunistic strategy
    • Experts
      • More knowledge
      • Fewer chunks
      • Larger chunks
  • 4. Better schema development
    • Ericsson and Polson
    • JC (a waiter) could memorize up to 20 dinner orders at a time
    • Used mnemonic strategies to encode items from different categories
      • (e.g., meat temperature, salad dressing, etc.).
    • For each order, clustered items with previous items from the same category
    • If blue cheese dressing, JC would encode the initial letter of the salad dressing with the initial letters from previous orders
      •  (e.g., BOOT = blue cheese, oil-vinegar, oil-vinegar, thousand island)
    • Recalled all items of a category clockwise
  • 5. More sensitive to context
    • Context
    • Encoding specificity principle
    • Tulving & Thompson (1973)
    • Remember better when encoding conditions match retrieval conditions
    • Context-dependent memory:  Easier to remember in the learning environment
    • State-dependent memory:  Easier to remember when internal states match
  • 6. Less sensitive to post-encoding distortion
    • Post-Encoding Distortion
    • The Misinformation Effect
    • Loftus & Palmer (1974)
      • Distortion of a memory by misleading post-event information
      • Subjects watched film
      • Week later
      • Read summary of film
      • 1 group gets summaries with misleading info
      • Told there was a Yield sign
      • Asked detailed questions
      • Distortion
      • Results: Didn’t recall the Stop sign
    • Source Confusion
      • Tendency to recall or recognize something as familiar but to forget where we encountered it
  • 7. Strategy
    • A. Algorithm
      • Depth-first search
      • Follow each branch of the tree to the end
      • If no solution, go back up and start again
      • Breadth-first search
      • How differ from novice?
      • Search tree all the way across each level
      • If no solution, try the next level
      • Systematically tries every possibility
      • If there is a solution to the problem, an algorithm, by definition, will find it
      • Slow
    • B. Heuristic
      • Rules of thumb
      • Fast
      • Can miss a solution
      • Textbook physics problem
      • A bullet leaves the muzzle of a gun at a speed of 400m/sec. The length of the gun barrel is 0.5m. Assuming that the bullet is uniformly accelerated, what is the average speed within the barrel?
      • Larkin, McDermott, Simon & Simon (1980)
      • Experts solved problem in 1/4th the time
      • Experts had fewer errors
      • Experts solved the problem forwards
      • Novices solved it backwards
      • Experts only work forwards with problems which they judge from experience to be simple.
      • Novices generally seem to need subgoals
      • Management of goals and sub-goals may be time-consuming
      • Working backwards may be useful for solving new problems
      • Working forward allows us to classify problems, so we can solve them more efficiently when we encounter them again
    • C. Analogical reasoning
      • Expert children use semantic and analogical comparisons significantly more frequently than novice children of the same age
  • 8. Strategy & Knowledge
    • 4-to-7-year-old dinosaur experts
    • Can generate complex hierarchical inferences involving categorization and attribution
    • Can infer that an unfamiliar dinosaur might be “pretty dangerous ‘cause he’s a meat eater”
    • differ from novice?
    • Categorizing as a “meat eater” from the dinosaur’s sharp teeth
    • inferring from categorical knowledge that this meat eater might be “pretty dangerous”
    • Can generate simple linear  inferences on the basis of specific features
    • differ from novice?
    • The dinosaur “Could walk real fast ‘cause he has giant legs”
    • Implies that “walking fast” is a property of “giant legs”
  • 9. More Practice
    • Expertise is often attributed to talent
    • More practice
    • Gardner (multiple intelligence) says born with tend processing certain types of information—musical, spatial, interpersonal, etc.
    • But skills of prodigies and savants seem to be acquired
    •  “Talents” can be taught
    • Absolute pitch can be acquired by most people
    • assuming music instruction begins at a sufficiently young age
    • A. Practice more per day
      • 1 hour per day
      • Biggest bang for the practice buck
      • 2 hours/day                                       Reduced benefit
      • 4 hours/day                                       No benefit found
    • B. Practice more for the long term
      • Massed practice = good for short term
      • Distributed practice = better for long term
    • C. Practice more years
      • Most domains require at least 10 years to attain expert levels of performance
      • 10,000 hrs
      • Expert at something
      • Demonstrable
      • Not self-declared
  • 10. Actually Do Something
  • 11. Experts Are Physically Able
    • Tall enough to play basketball
    • Small enough to be a jockey
    • Shaped like a model
    • High fashion
    • Swimsuit
    • See well enough for task
    • Albino sniper
  • 12. Expert has some talent
    • Genetic factor?
    • Not found any
    • Motivation
    • As genetic factor?
  • 13. Experts Start Early
    • Starting age is important in determining the level of skill one will attain
    • age 5 and 30 hours per week will always perform
    • age 10 and 30 hours per week
  • 14. Expert is domain specific
    • General reaction times not better
  • 15. Experts Persevere
    • Don’t stop
    • persevere determines your limits.
    • marathon, not a sprint.
  • 16. Delay Gratification
    • Practice with an audience
  • 17. Experts Work At It
    • Requires effort
  • 18. Look For Feedback
    • Seek it out
    • Use it
  • 19. Experts Last Longer
    • Maintain high levels of performance
    • after less accomplished performers begin to decline
    • Advantage is restricted to domain-specific tasks
    • physiological adaptations require sustained practice to maintain
    • mechanisms that govern expert performance may be easier to maintain than to acquire
  • 20. Deliberate Practice
    • 3 types of domain-relevant experience:
    • Work
    • Play
    • Deliberate Practice
      • optimal opportunities for performance improvement through feedback
  • Common Mistakes
    • Not enough
    • Lack of clear and appropriate goals
    • Underestimate variability of performance
    • Overestimate transfer of learning
    • Practice for immediate improvement rather than long-term

PRACTICE

  • 3 TYPES OF PRACTICE
    • Mass
    • Distributed
    • Deliberate
  • Practice as maintenance
    • Out of practice
    • Motor skills
  • Massed Practice
    • Effective for short term
    • large amount of material
    • over a short period of time
    • with only short intervals in between
    • Rest periods are shorter in duration than practice times
    • Driving range
    • Cramming night before test
    • Ted Williams
  • Distributed Practice
    • (Spaced practice)
    • short sessions over longer time
    • Ebbinghaus
      • spacing effect = learn better is spread over time
      • serial position effect
    •  Baddely & Longman (1978)
      • postmen how to type
      • massed practice
      • learn material in fewer days
      • most preferred
    • Shorter sessions over multiple days
      • learned better
      • less total hours
    • Spacing Effect and Advertising
      • not effective to present same commercial back-to-back (massed repetition)
      • different versions of the same ad
    • Where processed?
      • Hippocampus
      • Rhinal cortices (surround hippocampus)
        • mostly here
    • Rely on working memory
      • not ability to form long term memories
    • Rhinal Cortex
      • Perirhinal cortex
      • Entorhinal cortex
    • If remove hippocampus
      • but Rhinal cortices are un-damaged
      • some distributed practice ability
  • Deliberate Practice
    • K. Anders Ericsson
    • Experts
      • 3 types of experience
      • work, play and deliberate practice
    • Essential Components
      • to  improves accuracy and speed of performance
    • 1. Motivation
      • attend to task
      • effort to improve
      • practice isn’t fun
    • 2. Use pre-existing knowledge
      • Understand task quickly
      • Studying games played by chess masters
      • Predicting moves
    • 3. Immediate feedback
      • Informative
      • Willing to act on it
    • 4. Do task repeatedly
    • 5. Be engaged
      • Difficult to measure
      • A. diary
        • reactive effects are an issue
        • act different than usual
      • B. estimate amount of time engaged in deliberate practice since taking up the activity
        • long-term retrospective estimates
        • validity?
      • Retrospective accounts are similar
        • experts and novices
        • Got better every year
        • even if didn’t
    • 6. Monitoring
      • Detailed & Consistent
    • 7. Goal directed
      • Solve a problem
      • Counter a deficiency
      • Mimic target context as closely as possible
      • not maximize immediate performance
      • moon walk like Michael Jackson
    • 8. Target directed
      • Use of variety of appropriate target behaviors
      • Component actions needed to perform target skills
    • 9. Regular Sessions
      • Must maintain full attention
      • 1 hr per day                        biggest bang
      • 2 hr per day                        diminished returns
      • >4 hr per day                     can’t prove helps
    • 10. Limited Sessions
      • Can vary length
      • Don’t overdue
      • tennis elbow
      • writer’s cramp
      • guitarist’s cramp
    • 11. Massed & Distributed Practice
      • Within session
      • Essential Components
    • 12. Part practice
      • Segmentation
      • Only if parts don’t overlap
      • Essential Components
    • 13. Pace: Don’t Slow Down
      • Hard to speed up
    • EXAMPLE….
    • Novice Pianist
      • Always starts playing piece at the beginning.
      • After making a mistake, stops, re-plays that particular spot with correct notes, and continues from there.
      • Repeats over and over until target time of practice session is reached.
    • Concert Pianist
      • Decides to use conceptual memory to perform piece (for a recording).
      • Analyzes the form of the piece for structural, conceptual cues.
      • Designed practice sessions around particular goals: fingering, phrasing, pedal, technical difficulties, emotional cues – about 12 different dimensions in all.

Rehearsal vs Practice

  • Practice = aim for perfection
    • get it right
    • alone or with others
    • try to improve
    • work alone
    • work on specific areas
    • scheduled session
    • practice rooms
  • Rehearsal
    • Rehearsal = before public performance
      • coordinate with others
      • ready for the performance
      • in place where will perform
      • coordinated mind
      • rehearsal hall
      • final review
      • ensemble activities
      • orchestra doesn’t practice together, it rehearses
      • rehearsal focus on one type of material
      • leader or leaderless
    • Wedding rehearsal
    • Dress rehearsal = perform with every detail present, costumes, lighting, etc.
    • Run-throughs
      • blocking, stage movements, cue-to-cue (Q2Q)
    • Tech rehearsal
      • dry tech (no performers present, turn lights on and off)
    •  Noh theater (Japanese theater), practice separately, come together once: ichi-go ichi-e (one chance, one meeting)
    • practice = what you do when no one is looking
    • rehearsal = put everything together
    • Practice
      • stretching yourself
      • practice to where you’d feel uncomfortable doing it in front of others.
      • Practice is like the gym
    • Rehearsal at the Olympics
      • Collaboration
      • Shakedown cruise
      • Group focus
    • Mental Rehearsal
      • Physical rehearsal is better than mental
      • mental rehearsal is better than none
      • Expanded Rehearsal Strategy

Repetition

  • rote learning = memorization by repetition
  • recall quickly
  • lines in play
  • phone number
  • times tables
  • foundational knowledge
  • phonics
  • periodic table
  • anatomy
  • law statutes
  • formulas

‘There are two great principles of psychology: people have a tremendous capacity to change, and we usually don’t.”   Ken Tangen