Annotation 8

Meinz, Elizabeth J, and David Z Hambrick. "Deliberate Practice Is Necessary but

Not Sufficient to Explain Individual Differences in Piano Sight-Reading Skill:
The Role of Working Memory Capacity." Psychological Science 21.7 (2010): 914-
19. Web.

This article tried to verify the positive relationship between the sight-reading
ability, and the working memory capacity (WMC) and the deliberate practice by
doing the control experiment in a university music department. The authors
demonstrated a good example of how to challenge the authoritative notion that
“experts acquire elaborate mechanisms for encoding…that bypass basic capacities,
such as short-term memory”( Ericsson, 2007). In accordance with this, they
questioned that if two persons would reach the same level when practicing the
equal amount of repertories. After studying lots of theory and the trail, they
found that the results were too complicated and couldn’t rule out clearly. One
of the results was very tricky that there was no indication that the results
reflect enhancement of WMC towards piano training, but there were also no data
to prove that they haven’t got some kinds of improvement for each other. However,
they still speculated that WMC plays a direct role in sight-reading by determining
the extent to which pianists can prepare for keystrokes by looking ahead (p917).
What comes up in my mind when I read this article is that WMC is highly general
and unconscious so that no one can control it unless using brain machine. But
WMC can be trained and the good WMC person should learn fast comprehensive skill
at the same time so that he can input and output his memory easier. Although
this experiment is controversial, it inspired me a lot.