Deliberate Practice and Performance in Music, Games, Sports, Education, and Professions: A Meta-Analysis

Abstract

More than 20 years ago, researchers proposed that individual differences in performance in such domains as music, sports, and games largely reflect individual differences in amount of deliberate practice, which was defined as engagement in structured activities created specifically to improve performance in a domain. This view is a frequent topic of popular-science writing-but is it supported by empirical evidence? To answer this question, we conducted a meta-analysis covering all major domains in which deliberate practice has been investigated. We found that deliberate practice explained 26% of the variance in performance for games, 21% for music, 18% for sports, 4% for education, and less than 1% for professions. We conclude that deliberate practice is important, but not as important as has been argued.

Working memory, attentional control, and expertise in sports: A review of current literature and directions for future research.

“…However, this conceptualization has been challenged by empirical evidence (Hambrick & Meinz, 2011;Macnamara, Hambrick, & Oswald, 2014) and has been criticized in the scientific literature. While this criticism does not question the importance of deliberate practice in acquiring expertise it suggests that other factors beyond deliberate practice contribute to acquiring expertise-opportunity factors, basic ability factors, personality factors, developmental factors, and genetics (Hambrick et al, 2016).…”

Impact of the Arrangement of Game Information on Recall Performance of Multiplayer Online Battle Arena Players

“…The two measures we selected were total hours playing Dota 2 (M = 2196.75, SD = 1731.08, Min = 0.00, Max = 9616.32) and MMR from unranked team matches (M = 3226.26, SD = 1111.46, Min = 0.00, Max = 5237.00). We took this approach since, although not traditional measures of expertise such as deliberate practice (Ericsson & Lehmann, 1996), both measures are indicators of expertise and by combining both measures we aimed to create a more accurate estimate of expertise (Macnamara, Hambrick, & Oswald, 2014). We used the 'fa' function from the 'psych' R-package using the 'minres' method, to derive an expertise score (1-factor solution: eigenvalue = 1.1, Tucker Lewis Index of factoring reliability = 1.0; Figure 2).…”

Sensorimotor Learning in a Computerized Athletic Training Battery

“…These findings have relevance to the realm of skill acquisition that has sought to better understand the human capacity for learning and the factors that contribute to these abilities (Macnamara et al, 2014). Further, these results may have implications toward the utility of the Nike Sensory Station for athletic assessment and training approaches.…”