“In-Between” is the title of this conference. If I am right, it focuses on the role of the artist as a middle-man, or middle-woman, between art and learner. It focuses, maybe, on the way artists are capable to transfer knowledge, skills, attitudes, insights, emotions of an artistic nature. And it focuses, maybe, on the way experiences from the domain of the arts may be transferred through the mechanism inherent in the domain of education; two domains which sometimes seem to have a rather problematic relation because the arts are seen as a domain of beauty, of expressivity, of individuality, of freedom, of creativity, whereas education is seen as the domain of standardization, of group work, of compliance to rules, and of mastering the existing.
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Musicians often play under circumstances in which pressure may lead to anxiety and performance deterioration. Theories suggest that a drop in performance is due to a shift in focus of attention towards task-irrelevant information. In this study, we asked music students to report what they think and where they focus attention in three situations: when they play under pressure (Study 1; n = 81), the moment just before choking under pressure and when they try to recover after a mistake (Study 2; n = 25). Focus of attention was examined using retrospective verbal reports and point-spread distributions. Besides a notable focus on music-related information (36.9%), music students reported a considerable number of worries and disturbing thoughts (26.1%) during playing under pressure (Study 1). Just before choking, they showed even more worries and disturbing thoughts (46.4%) at the cost of music-related focus (21.1%) (Study 2), as also confirmed by the point-spread distributions. During recovery after a mistake, attention was mainly focused on music-related information (53.0%) and less on thoughts that give confidence (18.5%) and physical aspects (16.6%). It is advisable to help music students with improving their performance, for example, by attentional control training or providing training with elevated levels of anxiety.
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