Does Mental Practice Make Perfect?

Overview

The purpose of my project was to see if mental practice was better than physical practice. My hypothesis was, if I had three people watching a video of a pianist playing a specific song and imitating the pianist movements mentally and the other three watching that same video doing the same but, physically on a piano, the three people playing mentally should perform well compared with the other three people playing physically. First, have six subjects then split the subjects into two groups of three. Have each group of three watch a pianist playing a specific piece for 15 minutes per day. Second, one group will play physically along with the video and the other group will play mentally along with the video. Third, have each group of three repeat step 1 and 2 for 14 days and keep track of their “P” Log (“P” stands for Piano Practice Player Log). Fourth, on the last day (day 14), all will be asked to play the piece. Then calculate and chart results. My results showed that the subjects that practiced mentally were the same/ or better than the subjects that practiced physically. In conclusion, my hypothesis was correct, but may need more testing.

Competition history

• ISEF 2018 Embedded Systems · Entry EBED047

Resources

• ISEF abstract page ↗

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