MAINTAINING EXCELLENCE - DELIBERATE PRACTICE AND ELITE PERFORMANCE INYOUNG AND OLDER PIANISTS

Two studies investigated the role of deliberate practice in the mainte nance of cognitive-motor skills in expert and accomplished amateur pia nists. Older expert and amateur pianists showed the normal pattern of large age-related reductions in standard measures of general processin g speed. Performance on music-related tasks showed similar age-graded decline for amateur pianists but not for expert pianists, whose averag e performance level was only slightly below that of young expert piani sts. The degree of maintenance of relevant pianistic skills for older expert pianists was predicted by the amount of deliberate practice dur ing later adulthood. The role of deliberate practice in the active mai ntenance of superior domain-specific performance in spite of general a ge-related decline is discussed.