Aside from the day I graduated from velcro sneakers and learned how to tie my lace-up Spiderman shoes, I don’t think I thought very much about knots until the day my dad showed me how to tie a slip knot . Which led to a brief fascination with knot-tying.
Of course, in those days, you couldn’t just hop onto the internet and look up a video, so I ended up getting a knot-tying kit (this exact one, in fact). Which is when my initial excitement quickly faded…because learning how to tie knots with only a hand-drawn diagram to guide you is a special kind of challenge that 8-year old me was just not up to.
Things are quite different today, of course, as YouTube instructional run the gamut from knot-tying to solving a Rubik’s Cube to cooking the perfect eggs to surviving an alien abduction .
And the research does suggest that observational learning – where we learn how to perform a skill by watching someone else perform that skill – can be a useful way to enhance learning and performance.
But a recent study suggests that if you’re going to engage in this kind of learning, there’s a better way to do it. That a simple tweak to the process can increase the effectiveness of this learning method, whether you’re watching a YouTube video, or observing your teacher demonstrate a new skill in your lesson.
An Australian study
A team of Australian researchers (Mierowsky, Marcus, & Ayres, 2019) recruited 48 Australian university students with varying levels of musical experience.
Everyone had at least one year of prior music experience on an instrument of some kind, but those who had less than a year of piano experience were part of the “less experienced” group. The other half of participants, who all had at least 2 years of piano experience were considered part of the “more experienced” group.
4 short musical passages
Each participant was tasked with learning four short musical passages of increasing levels of difficulty, by watching videos of a pianist playing them first.
Passage 1 was a 10-second clip involving a single hand. Passages 2 and 3 were a little more difficult, lasting 10 seconds and involving both hands. And passage 4 was the most challenging, requiring just a single hand, but lasting 15 seconds. Here are some excerpts of the passages:
With video demonstrations
The video clips were filmed from above the keyboard, so that the pianist’s hands and fingers would be clearly visible. Like so:
Gesturing vs. no gesturing
Each student was told that they would have four chances to watch the instructional video for a passage, after which they would be recorded playing the passage themselves.
Half of the participants (12 less experienced and 12 more experienced participants) were instructed to watch the video with their hands laying flat and still on the table in front of them all four times. This was the no-gesturing group.
The other participants were also told to watch the video with their hands laying flat and still – but just for the first two viewings. For the last two viewings, they were asked to mimic the pianist’s hand movements in the air while watching the pianist play. So like air guitar, but for piano. This was the gesturing group.
And how did they do when it was time to play the passages on a real piano?
Scoring
Well, the participants’ performances were evaluated on two basic criteria. A – did they play the right notes? And B – did they do so in time, with no hesitations or delays?
Which group did better?
On average, the gesturing group – the one that engaged in air piano while watching the example videos – got higher scores than the no-gesturing group which kept their hands still when watching the videos.
The scores were 86.9 (out of 100) vs. 78.4 for passage #1; 86.5 vs. 63.1 for passage # 2; 78.4 vs. 59.9 for passage # 3; and 52.3 vs. 44.3 for passage #4.
However, there was one interesting exception.
On passage #1, the easiest sequence of notes, gesturing led to better performance for the less experienced folks, but worse performance for the more experienced folks.
Wait…what?!
The researchers note that this isn’t all that unexpected. They explain that there’s a phenomenon known as the “expertise reversal effect” that has been observed in some other learning contexts. The gist, is that using certain learning strategies to process information you already know well can be redundant, essentially taking up unnecessary mental bandwidth, and leading to poorer learning.
So what are the practical takeaways from this?
Take action
Well, my take is that if you’re going to watch or listen to recordings of a new piece you’re learning, it might help to accelerate the learning process if you make little physical gestures along with the recording.
No, this doesn’t mean you have to go full-on air guitar mode . Or pull a Mr. Bean . It seems that the idea is to use small subtle motions which simply approximate the movements that you’re going to use eventually. Like moving your fingers, or making small hand or arm movements.
The more intriguing suggestion that the researchers offer, is the idea of having students engage in gesturing or mimicking in lessons when their teacher demonstrates a new skill or technique. This seemed like a totally new idea to me – but perhaps there are some teachers who are already doing this? If so, please do share your experience in the comments – I’d be curious to hear how this works!
Caveats
One important thing to keep in mind when interpreting this study, is to remember that there’s a difference between short-term performance improvements and stable, long-term learning. And from this study alone, it’s not clear if the gesturing strategy leads to better learning, or just faster improvements in the moment.
Meaning, if you were to take a look at performance on these excerpts 24 hours later, would the gesturing group still perform better? Or would their performances regress back to a similar level as the non-gesturing group?
(BTW, if you’d like a refresher on the learning-performance distinction, here’s a good 4-min video and a previous post that gets into this important concept.)
Reference
Mierowsky, R., Marcus, N., & Ayres, P. (2019). Using mimicking gestures to improve observational learning from instructional videos. Educational Psychology, 1–20.
9 Responses
I strongly use with students preliminary gestures for two purposes: to demonstrate the intonation line of the melody, and to demonstrate the idea of specific playing movements.
Again I would like to point out the research on the Mirror Neuron System! We all have an inborn neurological set up to make possible syncronisation with others in the herd….May I take the opportunity to recommend “The Empathic Brain” by Christian Keyser!
Yes, it’s all about mirror neurons!
Noa, first of all, thank you for your very helpful newsletter. I read it weekly and use what I learn to become a better teacher.
Now to my comment:
For years with young students I have had them sing while fingering their instrument while listening to a recorded performance (I use SmartMusic), following this I perform the exercise while they buzz on heir mouthpieces (brass players) and finger the instrument (we often use a buzzing device called a BERP or just the mouthpiece alone). This is followed by the student performing the line which SmartMusic gives a numerical score to.
I’ve experimented with students simply performing first and find that disastrous. When I follow the sing-buzz-play method as described above I usually get a performance of 90% or above. If we fail, I usually work the problem spots and try it again. We continue this process until we score 90% or higher OR until I feel we’re beating a dead horse. ????
I continue this for 2-3 years until they are ready to move to material that is not available in SmartMusic. Thereafter I return to this process to solve certain elusive passages, but the routine is ingrained in the student and we don’t have to go through the routine for everything we play.
Shall we call it the “shadow-boxing effect?”
I’m an amateur pianist and realize I have been intuitively doing this type of gesturing when my piano teacher demonstrates – because of my ballet background! In ballet class, when learning a combination of steps for an exercise or performance, dancers “mark” the steps with hand movements. That way, they absorb the verbal instructions of which steps to take, in which directions; the visual stimulus of watching the teacher perform the steps (depending on the teacher; some just talk through what they want or show it by hand movements themselves!); and get the moves into their bodies through the hand movements.
When I’m away from my viola, ideally I will practice all of the difficult passages in the music I’m working on three times: first, just mentally, hearing the music and visualizing myself playing it; second, moving my left hand fingers on my right hand as if my right hand were the fingerboard; and third, holding my left index finger in my right hand as if my left index finger were the bow, and moving my right hand.
Noa, it is always a pleasure to read your newsletter. It is a great refresh from some knowledge I’ve already learned and the new studies bring a new light on them.
This is a very interesting study. But there are so many possibilities here that it is hard to say whether the mimic helped.
One other explanation is that movements in general, as far they are not too strong, would help anyway. Drawing on a piece of paper could have the same effect.
It is very hard to stay concentrated while watching a simple tutorial because your mind will travel away. However, if you are doing something else, something very simple, you will learn faster no matter what you are doing.
Athletes practice in their imagination. Studies have shown that kinaesthetic imagining improves performance. So this study reminds me of this. Building neural pathways through gesture or even active imagination.