Musical Expertise & Ability

Cog 366

Presentation by

Lisa Hollenbeck

What is Expertise?

Expertise = “what one is who has acquired special skill in or knowledge of a particular subjects through professional training and practical experience" (Webster's dictionary, 1976, p. 800).

– Example

• highly experienced professionals such as medical doctors, accountants, teachers and scientists,  but has been

expanded to include those who exhibit superior performance through instruction and extended practice:

– highly skilled performers in the arts, such as music, painting and writing, sports, such as swimming, running and golf and games, such as bridge and chess.(Ericsson, 2000)

Expert Performance and Deliberate Practice An updated excerpt from Ericsson (2000)

http://www.psy.fsu.edu/faculty/ericsson/ericsson.exp.perf.html

What is important about Studying Expertise?

A principle reason is to be able to effect incremental learning.

– Learn how to produce more Music Experts • How to develop technical expertise

skills– Structure in music – hear it, see it,

do it• How to develop expressive expertise

skills– Emotion in music

How does expertise develop?

Becoming Expert in socially defined ways is the process of connecting intrinsic expertise to the outside world so that it becomes manifest in particular types of behaviors in particular types of situations.(Sloboda, 2005)

– Type of Behavior = hours of practice

– Situations = # of cumulative experiences • Cumulative experiences of

– Technical skills, Expression & Emotion

Formula for Expertise

Social Expertise = Intrinsic Expertise(hrs. practice + exper.)

Variables of Expertise

individuals gain high-level implicit knowledge about major structural features of the music of their culture during first 10 years of life and preserve this through out life time.

Tacit Expertise – depends on exposure to skills, modeling, reconstruction, and internalizing of knowledge in the specific domain

Knowledge of complex structures to be built up simply as a result of frequent exposure to the domain of music.

Acquiring musical ability through enculturation

Can remember music which conforms to cultural language better than music which does not.

Can recreate plausible solutions to recall music they have just heard

Ability to judge whether or not a sequence is acceptable according to cultural rules.

Ability to correctly identify the mood or emotion of a musical passage. – Ex. Happy, Sad, Angry

Question: Why do people develop at different rates and to different levels of expertise?

What is Musical Ability?

What is musical ability?

– An acquired cognitive expertise, which entails the ability to make sense of musical sequences, through the mental operations that are performed on sounds.

– Being able to distinguish or produce a range of emotions through music by listening and/or performing.

Inborn Ability/ Innate Talent What is it? Sloboda considers talent to have five properties: (1) It originates in genetically transmitted structures and hence is at least

partly innate. (2) Its full effects may not be evident at an early stage, but there will be some

advance indications, allowing trained people to identify the presence of talent before exceptional levels of mature performance have been demonstrated.

(3) These early indications of talent provide a basis for predicting who is likely to excel.

(4) Only a minority are talented, for if all children were, then there would be no way to predict or explain differential success.

(5) talents are relatively domain-specific.

Levels of Musical Expertise(ME)?Level of Musical

ExpertiseBackground Formal Training

and/or Experience

3. Expert level

(Professional Musicians)

Extensive formal training and practice in music(at least 10

years and many thousand hours of practice

Most accomplished 10,000 hrs.

Least accomplished

5,000 hrs

2. Sub-expert

Level

(amateurs)

Varying degrees of formal training and practice in music in addition to developmental

changes and acculturation

2,000 hrs

Average adult performance in the population No set hrs.

Learned in surrounding

culture

1. Basic level of Experience (non-

musicians)

Informal training and practice in music (developmental

changes and acculturation)

Leve

l o

f

perf

orm

ance

Form

al Training E

xperience

Lehmann, A. (1997). Acquisition of Expertise in Music: efficiency of deliberate practice as a moderating variable in accounting for sub-expert performance. Perception and cognition of Music. 161-187.

Formal Training & Experience

14004410

7000

12810

0

5000

10000

15000

Hours of Practice

8th grade- 12thgrade

College MarineBand

TotalHours

Practiced

Practice/Experience Activities

Example Formal Training & Experience

Examples of Musical Expertise without Formal Instruction

Background General Characteristic

Of Individuals

Common factors to acquiring Musical Expertise

Individual Examples

Musical Prodigies

Innate Talent or Genius?

Motivation, Persistent practice/experienceDedication(Wilcox, 1977)Genetic/Innate Ability

J.S. Bach. & sons

L.V. Beethoven

Savants Generally low IQ usually male often autistic

Intrinsic Motivation for musical activity w/strong obsessive component

Practice: instrument, time & opportunity

Absence of negative reinforcement

Derek Paravinici

Jazz Musicians Part of mass Folk-cultureSelf-taught

Casual Immersion: Rich Musical Environment, listening & observationImmersion in Music: systematic exploration of performance with Intensive practice/performanceInternal or External MotivationOpportunity & Challenges available or sought

Bix Beiderbeck

Louis Armstrong

Roy Eldridge

Musical Prodigies

Musical Savants and Emotion

Derek - Autistic and Blind Musical Savant

-The Musical Genius Part 3

Expression & Emotion in the ranges of Musical Expertise

Major function of music is to suggest or display a range of emotional responses

Common musical structures have particular perceptible properties that support the pattern of expectation underlying emotions

Expression in musical performance has the effect of making these structural features more prominent and thus heightening the emotional response.

References: Webster's dictionary, 1976, p. 800). Ericsson (2000). Expert Performance and Deliberate Practice: An updated excerpt.

Retrieved online on February 22, 2008 at http://www.psy.fsu.edu/faculty/ericsson/ericsson.exp.perf.html

Below is the unedited penultimate draft of:Howe, M.J.A., Davidson, J.W., & Sloboda, J.A. (19XX). Innate talents: Reality or myth? Behavioral and Brain Sciences, XX (X): XXX-XXX.The final published draft of the target article, commentaries andAuthor's Response currently available only in paper. Retrieved online on March 1, 2008 at http://www.bbsonline.org/Preprints/OldArchive/bbs.howe.html

Lehmann, A. (1997). Acquisition of Expertise in Music: efficiency of deliberate practice as a moderating variable in accounting for sub-expert performance. Perception and cognition of Music. 161-187.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2p2g84h9U4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGOH1xzNCOU&feature=related Sloboda, J. (2005) Exploring the Musical Mind: Cognition, Emotion, Ability,

Function. New York: Oxford University Press.