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#Distributed practice makes (almost) perfect

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#Distributed practice makes (almost) perfect

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Once again, in high school band, we had playing assessments. These usually consisted of playing difficult parts of our concert songs or short, 20 measure melodies with many dynamics or complicated counting in a room with a recording device. Unfortunately for me, I would always forget to bring my clarinet home since I would be too preoccupied on getting to cross country or track practice on time (we would have to do push-ups if we were late). Therefore, I almost always practiced the piece many times in the couple days leading up to the playtest. In lecture, we defined this as massed practice, where the amount of rest between practice sessions and trials are very short. But, when I saw my score, I realized that this type of practice was not efficient. According to the Baddeley & Longman study (1978), it is better to practice for a short amount of time over a longer time period than it is to practice a lot in a smaller time period. Clearly, this study supports the idea that massed practice is not an efficient way to learn, as does my own experience. When the next playing assessment came around, I decided to spread out my practice sessions. This time, I practiced for 30 minutes two weeks in advance of the playtest. According to lecture, this is distributed practice since there is a long rest period between practice sessions. Needless to say, I did much better on this playtest than the previous one. This proves that mass practice is ineffective since the brain needs rest for structural changes such as those in learning to occur.

The gif below reflects how I felt in band class after I mastered my playing test:

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“Take a minute to close your eyes. Imagine the course. Picture the various hills and terrain. Now picture yourself running with good form: knees lifted, arms swinging from the shoulder, with your head and neck aligned with the spine. Now imagine yourself finishing the race. A rush of adrenaline propels your arms and legs to move faster despite the heavy sensation in your legs. Feel what it’s like to finish the race, knowing that you gave it all you had.” In the week leading up to cross country races, my coach used 3-5 minutes of our practice warm-ups to lead us through a guided visualization. He told us to lie flat on our backs and close our eyes as we imagined ourselves on the course of the race we had that week. My coach would tailor his guided visualization to the upcoming race, being sure to mention the nuances in terrain, such as large hills or sharp turns. In doing this, he was having us engage in mental practice, which is the act of cognitively rehearsing a physical skill in the absence of physical movement. He encouraged us to use internal or kinesthetic energy, meaning we would imagine ourselves in our own bodies and experience the sensations associated with running.

By visualizing the course, I was able to mentally prepare myself for the difficult aspects of the course and adjust my gait and stride more rapidly. Thus, mental practice allowed me to respond quickly to environmental stimuli since I had already seen and reacted to it before. It was also very helpful on hilly courses since it allowed me to formulate a plan of attack (on the hill) before actually experiencing the familiar burn in my calves. When I was struggling to run up hills, I would remember what my cross country coach used to say: we eat hills for breakfast!

This gif resembles how I felt when I conquered the hills at on particularly challenging course:

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In high school, as a part of being in symphonic band, we were all required to be in the marching band. This means that we had about 250 students in our marching band since I went to a larger high school in Minnesota. Yes, I had to wear all the classic marching band gear including a thick, ugly uniforms, dorky hat, and suspenders. During class and if the weather allowed, we would go outside to the football field to practice marching. Once my band teachers thought we had the marching steps and technique down, they would have us practice playing our instrument while marching. As stated in the attention lecture, human performance is limited to the amount of perceptual, cognitive, and motor activities that can be performed simultaneously. This aligns with my own personal experience in marching band since I had many aspects to focus my attention on simultaneously. My first attempt at marching and playing did not go so well; the tasks of reading and counting music, counting my steps, and physically marching while playing my instrument proved to be very difficult to do all at once.

According to our attention lecture, when two or more tasks are performed simultaneously, there can be interference between the tasks. An example of this is when I was unable to march and play my clarinet at the same time, so I had to stop doing one task (playing my clarinet) in order to continue doing the other (marching). Since both of them required some of my limited attention capacity, I could not perform both tasks at the same time. Therefore, my attention capacity can be best described by the central-resource theory of attention since there is only one central reserve of resources, so all activities must compete for attention. Thankfully, with time and practice, marching became automatic, so it eventually required little of my attention to perform. I was able to successfully march and play by the end of the season.

Until I reached this point, I would fake play my clarinet while marching and move my fingers as if I were playing. Below is a gif showing how I felt when I eventually learned how to play and march simultaneously.:

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When I was growing up, rollerblading was one of my favorite pastimes. It began when my neighbors and I made a “scooter city” on our driveway with chalk; with winding roads, stop lights, a car wash (our garden hose set on the mist setting), and of course a drive-thru with popsicles, which really hit the spot on a hot summer day. Fast forward 6 years to high school, and I was still rollerblading: this time along the smooth paths surrounding my hometown. My favorite time of year to rollerblade was now fall, taking in the sights of leaves turning from vibrant green to burnt orange as I glided through the forested path.

As the seasons changed once again, the icy winter roads prevented me from rollerblading. Then, a couple of my friends asked me if I wanted to go ice skating with them. At the time, I was a little bit nervous since I had never gone ice skating before; but, I figured that some of my rollerblading skills might transfer over to ice skating since they have similar elements. I laced up my hockey skates and took my first step on the ice, and with surprise, I realized that ice skating was much easier than I thought. In fact, I was able to glide in circles around my friends! This type of transfer between rollerblading and ice skating is a positive transfer, and it aligns well with the identical elements theory. As stated in the theory, transfer occurs when there is a high amount of similarity between skills and contextual components. Rollerblading and ice skating involve similar skills such as balance and multi-limb coordination. Since rollerblading and ice skating share a large number of similar elements and observable movement characteristics, my rollerblading skills were able to transfer over to ice skating.

Today, I enjoy ice skating as a winter activity, most likely due to the high amount of transfer that occurred between rollerblading and ice skating. Below is a picture of me ice skating at the Shell with my roommate last winter:

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Have you ever been in a lecture where the professor flies through their content so fast that you don’t have enough time to write down what they say? And to make matters worse, they don’t even post their material online? Well, if you haven’t, consider yourself lucky. Unfortunately for me, I have have experienced this feeling many times in my undergraduate life. My first experience with this stressful, fast-paced lecturing was freshman year. At the time, I was naïve enough to think that I could copy my professor’s notes by hand. On days where I had to write particularly fast to ensure I had all the content, my handwriting would develop into some sort of cursive hybrid. It got to the point where I couldn’t even read my own notes!

This was my first exposure to Fitts’ Law, where accuracy is inhibited by speed. Now, as a junior, I still experience this speed-accuracy tradeoff while taking notes (now on my laptop) in abnormal psych, but this time my errors are reflected as misspelled words. Since I am in a time crunch to copy down all the notes before they disappear forever, my notes contain many typos, since I must trade off accuracy to maintain speed. Therefore, my increase in typing speed causes my accuracy to suffer.

The gif below reflects how I type my notes in abnormal psychology lecture since I must type as quickly and vigorously as possible to get all the notes down before she switches the slide.