Lecture 8 - Expert Performance in our everyday life Flashcards
Koestner’s Basketball Peak and Plateau
- Freshman year of HS
– CYO team
– Freshman HS team
– St Brigit’s and Shake and
Bake;
– Sophomore year and
thereafter.
Why? improved a lot when in basement to practice drills. Got a lot better, and stopped practicing those drills. So got worse.
Stopped deliberate practice
Ericsson
-Ericsson does think there are genetic influences that will influence whether you can become an expert. It’s just that those genetic factors have nothing to do with innate ability.
–Natural interest (genetic) can predispose you to becoming an expert
–Self-control and conscientiousness (genetic) also have an influence
-Mental representations: Patterns of info can begin to chunk together to increase speed of mental processing
- Mastery in two fields? Still lots of training + sometimes the two fields have things in common, links
Types of Experience:
- Deliberate practice = individualized training on tasks
selected by a qualified teacher.
-purposeful and deliberate, focused and goal to improve. Key to improve - Play = primary goal is the inherent enjoyment of the
activity.
-for fun - Work = public performances, competitions or other
performance motivated by $
-doesn’t result in much improvement (it’s a lot of randomness, not actually learning proper technique)
Types of Practice (Updated in Peak 2017)
- Naïve: Doing repeatedly and expecting repetition to result in improvement
- Purposeful: Practice that is goal-oriented, thoughtful and focused
– Well-defined specific goals
– Focused – requires full attention
– Involves feedback
– You must get out of comfort zone - Deliberate: Activities designed to push you beyond your current level
– Requires a field that is relatively well developed
– Can measure differences in performance
– There exist accepted training methods
– Requires expert instruction
Ericsson’s research combined
“purposeful” and “deliberate”
together under the term “deliberate”
People often start with deliberate practice, but once good enough, we want to get to the play level. We stop deliberate practice, and so we stop improving as much.
Video Example of Deliberate Practice
* Basketball drills in the
movie Hoosiers
* “My practices are not
designed for your
enjoyment!”
-Not for pleasure, but to develop expertise
Bob Vallerand example
Him and his brother practiced basketball together… used chairs and stuff, practiced drills
Why is deliberate practice so important?
1) goal to attend to the task and improve performance;
2) explicit instructions about best methods of improvement;
3) immediate feedback on one’s performance;
4) repeatedly performs the same or similar tasks
Ex: Backhand volley in tennis;
Hitting curve ball;
Hockey stick-handling
Surprising fact about experience
In most domains years of experience with an
activity is only weakly related to level of
performance.
Why?
More experience does not mean better performance
Just doing the job, no focus on improving skills
Ex: Accountants
Therapists
Medical Doctors
Amateur vs Expert Delib. Practice
Experts practiced way more
But does this explain truly great
performance?
- Tiger Woods vs rest of PGA?
- Wayne Gretzky & Sidney Crosby vs rest of NHL?
- Steph Curry and Steve Nash vs rest of NBA?
Why was Tiger Woods so much better
than all other pros.:
The monotonic benefits assumption-
* Performance is a monotonic function of the amount of
deliberate practice accumulated since these individuals
began deliberate practice in the domain.
Accumulated deliberate practice = Amount of weekly
practice and age at which individual began.
Critical Study as Described in Peak
- Violinists at best music school in Germany
- 3 groups of ten performers identified by profs.
- Also included 10 adult members of philharmonic
- Carefully assessed time doing deliberate practice until age 18
The violinists with the most hours of practice were the best. Number of hours correlated with mastery
No example of a “natural”
No case of a “grinder” either (did the most hours but still wasn’t good)
Replications:
Other violinsts
Pianists
Ballet Dancers
Tennis Players
Other Athletes
But does this explain truly great
performance?
The case of Wayne Gretzky
-did not stop deliberate practice (i think)
The Message for the aspiring expert?
* “Crucial challenge is to avoid the arrested
development associated with generalized
automaticity of performance by deliberately
acquiring and refining cognitive mechanisms
to support continued learning and
improvement.”
Why are some people truly great, the “crème de la crème”?
They are still the hardest workers with the best mental game
Expertise among older performers
Expertise among older performers?
Why does Sidney Crosby stay so good?
Many star older performers reduce their amount of practice
Those who maintain their deliberate practice keep their high levels (ex: Sydney Crosby)
-him playing with a fan in the Laurentians story
But what if I don’t want to be an
expert?
- Deliberate practice may sometimes be useful
to just help individuals participate and to
blend in?
Especially for those who aren’t experts!
Every day activities
– Swimming/Dancing
– Faculty Meeting Skills
Questions of the day (& Another Example):
Why do we stop getting better? We reduce deliberate practice
How relevant is
Ericsson & Charness’
theory to our
everyday lives? Incredibly relevant to everyday life… put a bit more effort and can get much better at anything
Summarizing Key Insights:
- Playing doesn’t help you get better.
- Competing doesn’t help you get better.
- Only deliberate practice helps you get better.
- We must discover what is the best deliberate
practice in each area. - These insights will be especially helpful in our
everyday lives, as worker, amateur performer
and parent.
