Effects of Attentional Focus on Motor Performance and Physiology in a Slow-Motion Violin Bow-Control Task: Evidence for the Constrained Action Hypothesis in Bowed String Technique

Abstract

The constrained action hypothesis states that focusing attention on action outcomes rather than body movement improves motor performance. Dexterity of motor control is key to successful music performance, making this a highly relevant topic to music education. We investigated effects of focus of attention (FOA) on motor skill performance and EMG muscle activity in a violin bowing task among experienced and novice upper strings players. Following a pedagogically informed exercise, participants attempted to produce single oscillations of the string at a time under three FOA: internal (on arm movement), external (on sound produced), and somatic (on string resistance). Experienced players’ number of bow slips was significantly reduced under somatic focus relative to internal, although number of successful oscillations was not affected. Triceps electromyographic activity was also significantly lower in somatic compared to internal foci for both expertise groups, consistent with physiological understandings of FOA effects. Participants’ reported thoughts during the experiment provided insight into whether aspects of constrained action may be evident in performers’ conscious thinking. These results provide novel support for the constrained action hypothesis in violin bow control, suggesting a somatic FOA as a promising performance-enhancing strategy for bowed string technique.

Focus of attention in musical learning and music performance: a systematic review and discussion of focus instructions and outcome measures

“…Looking back at the original experimental design and experimentally manipulated instruction in the ski-simulator study by Wulf et al (1998) , an attentional instruction focusing on the musical instrument (or maybe certain aspects of voice as the pendant for singers) has the biggest theoretical overlap to the original external instructions in motor learning, focusing on not the feet but the wheels of the ski-simulator platform. Allingham et al (2021) ; see also ( Allingham and Wöllner, 2022 ) used the term somatic focus to depict the importance of physical resistance and the tactile sensory feedback while focusing on the instrument. Duke et al (2011) and Stambaugh (2017) also used the instrumental focus on keys to find differences between concentrating on essential parts of the piano or the wind instrument and concentrating on the sounds that arise through actuating these essential parts.…”

“…Furthermore, another 4 studies used different kinds of 14 acoustical analyses of recorded performances as dependent measures (ACU; 22%), e.g., roughness, spectral centroid, formant frequencies, or harmonic-to-noise ratio (see Table 5 ). Electromyography analysis (EMG) for measuring the effects of FOA on muscle activity or muscle energy—and therefore on movement efficiency—was solely conducted by two studies of the same research group ( Allingham et al, 2021 ; Allingham and Wöllner, 2022 ). However, six different EMG measures were applied (10%), the same amount as for self-evaluation ratings (SER; 10%) and error detection (ERD; 10%).…”

“…In terms of participants’ expertise, the frequency distribution is homogenous, with six studies investigating experts, five studies that defined either two groups of experts and novices or no distinction at all (both), and four studies solely with participants and authors defined as novices or amateurs. As expertise plays a big role in the discussion of FOA effects in sports or motor learning (see Introduction and Singh and Wulf, 2020 ), this differentiation was discussed in many of the included studies (e.g., Stambaugh, 2019 ; Allingham and Wöllner, 2022 ; Jentzsch and Braun, 2023 ). Regarding the participants’ instruments category, which is strongly correlated with the type of musical task within the experimental design (see Table 4 ), all classical instrumental groups (wind, string, piano, and voice) are present in the included studies except for percussion instruments.…”

“…Following these results, the FOA paradigm of Wulf et al (1998) , and different explanatory hypotheses (e.g., CAH), some music-related experimental and exploratory studies have been conducted, e.g., in singing ( Atkins and Duke, 2013 ; Atkins, 2017 , 2018 ; Treinkman, 2022a ), on the effect in piano playing ( Cheng et al, 2011 ; Lipke-Perry et al, 2022 ; Jentzsch and Braun, 2023 ), violin playing ( Allingham et al, 2021 ; Allingham and Wöllner, 2022 ), wind instrument playing ( Stambaugh, 2017 , 2019 ; Williams et al, 2023 ), or in music education settings ( Silvey and Montemayor, 2014 ; Montemayor et al, 2016 ; Parsons and Simmons, 2021 ). The results of these studies vary widely, with some evidence of a positive effect of an external FOA on certain aspects of musical learning and musical performances and some results showing no significant differences between different FOA instructions.…”

Practicing Musical Intention: The Effects of External Focus of Attention on Musicians’ Skill Acquisition

“…The primary reasons for this are the subjective nature of assessing musical performance and the difficulties of researching in a complex field environment. Previous studies involving musicians and external focus have monitored the effects of external focus on finger movements (Duke et al, 2011), the tone quality of singers (Atkins, 2017), sound quality of wind players (Stambaugh 2017;, bow control of violinists (Allingham et al, 2021;Allingham & Wöllner, 2022), and on perceived skill level and expressivity by outside jurors (Mornell & Wulf, 2019) as well as measuring the movement and sound (Van Zijl & Luck, 2013). There is very little research on the effects of external focus on musical learning and in a naturalistic setting.…”