Ever Feel Like You Cave Under Pressure? This Study Aimed To Identify Why That Happens

Why do we get performance anxiety when we’ve practiced a skill a hundred times? Do professional musicians or even Olympic athletes still get nervous? 

We can look for answers within two experiments described in a study titled “Back to feedback: aberrant sensorimotor control in music performance under pressure.”

In Experiment 1, scientists generated errors in the rhythm that could potentially interrupt a professional pianist’s ability to stay in tempo throughout a song.

The errors then challenged the performers’ audio processing and, consequently, their fine motor skills.

So, trying to mess up professionals purposefully should through them off their game, right? The study’s authors let pianists begin playing a song at their chosen tempo; then, they delayed the sound the piano produced by around 80 milliseconds. 

They did this randomly throughout the piece to see the level of disruption they could create in the pianist’s performance.

Besides this constant, there was also a variable; one group was observed by another pianist and recorded on a video camera to recreate a stressful performance environment. 

The experiment ultimately revealed that not observed pianists performed better than the observed group, despite both groups experiencing time delays and rhythmic disruptions.

Furthermore, the accuracy of keystrokes was radically reduced under the stress of the altered timing.

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In Experiment 2, there were three groups; one who was trained using the delayed sound system and learning to cope with the delays; one who was instructed to speed up to accommodate the slowed down timing; and another that did no training.

The results? The group trained to accept the irregular keystroke rhythms had the least timing errors among all three groups when playing with performance stressors present.

The authors of the study concluded what might have caused these results. The musicians trained to handle the distraction were mentally normalizing the auditory disruptions and then responding accurately through their movements. They were, in fact, extra vigilant for mistakes and were able to respond well under the added psychological pressure.

What does this all mean? First, the scientists and professors who collaborated on the project could go on to design a training program to prevent professionals from having worsened fine motor skills due to the body’s stress reactions (which are typically caused by competition or performance).

The experiments also led scientists closer to understanding the possible solutions to preventing performance anxiety in general.

Maybe Olympic trainers or piano masters will learn to cultivate training that uses these findings.

 A world without last-minute panic and the threat of “choking under pressure” would certainly put even the most expert performers at ease.

You can read the study here.

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