Prática mental e aprendizagem de habilidades técnicas em estudantes de violão

Abstract

Mental Practice is commonly defined as the imaginary rehearsal of some action, situation or ability in the absence of the real stimulus. Its use is quite widespread in instrument learning, but, as an extracurricular activity. There are old accounts of the use of Mental Practice for the development of instrumental technique. Its effects have been tested in experiments since the 1940s. Some variations and lack of consensus in the results of the experiments led researchers to observe possible biases in some procedures used in this type of research. The predominant use of pianists as research subjects, in this type of experiments, opens the discussion abput the type of data, results and possibilities of variables in the investigation with other musical instruments, considering that each instrument has its own technical peculiarities. The objective of this research was to explore and describe the possible correlations between variables, related to the learning of technical skills, with university students of classical guitar. The research was descriptive and correlational. The variables considered were: imagery skills (collected through the MIQ-3 questionnaire), age, experience with music, experience with classical guitar, academic period in which the students were enrolled, and the number of hours studied daily by the participants. Performance data was collected through a specialized jury’s evaluation, after two practice modalities (mental and physical). All the participants went through both modalities, following a within subjects research design. No significant correlations were found between the variables tested in the specific context. However, the results may help guide future discussions on the peculiarities surrounding the learning of technical skills on the guitar before carrying out experiments aimed at generalizing results.