The Verbal/Cognitive Stage of Motor Learning

In November, we discussed the stages of motor learning that are involved when we are building new skills. In the next few blogs, we will take a more in-depth look at each stage, the first of which is the verbal/cognitive stage.

As outlined in The Vocal Athlete by Wendy D. Leborgne and Marci Rosenberg, the verbal/cognitive stage is where we're just starting to explore a new skill and getting a feel for what we're doing. This stage requires a lot of repetition, guidance, and feedback, and involves many failed attempts.

When students come to my studio singing with a significant amount of jaw tension, for instance (a common inefficiency among singers), my job is to help them create a new habit of singing with freedom at the jaw. To let you in a bit on the process, here is how I often structure voice lessons to help them work through the verbal/cognitive stage as they acquire this new skill.

First, I explain the important role of the articulators in singing (jaw, lips, tongue, etc.) and how they allow us to have clear diction as well as open, resonant vowels. In order to provide accurate anatomical understanding, I show them pictures of the temporalis and masseter muscles and explain their function as jaw-closing muscles. Then I direct students through self-massage of these muscles, encouraging release of any tightness or tension.

Temporalis muscle, by Henry Vandyke Carter - Henry Gray (1918) Anatomy of the Human Body (See "Book" section below)Bartleby.com: Gray's Anatomy, Plate 382, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=528874

Continuing, I ask students to place their hands across their jaws while encouraging a sense of looseness, using their own sense of touch to create sensations they can feel and remember. Then I have them vocalize on simple, easy patterns while maintaining the sensation of looseness at the jaw. When they can do this, I ask them to look in the mirror as they vocalize so they can see what it looks like to sing with freedom at the jaw.

Masseter muscle, by Kevjonesin - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=26222892

Then I will start to take some of those cues away. I will ask them to drop their hand from the jaw but to continue looking in the mirror. Then I will have them look away from the mirror and only use their internal awareness (proprioception) to see if the jaw is still free as they sing. Then I will change the vocal pattern they are singing and after every third or fourth repetition I will ask them to either touch their jaws again or to look back in the mirror. By doing this, the students start to build a repertoire of visual cues and physical sensations of what it is like to sing without excessive jaw tension.

I may then move on to a completely different exercise and change their focus to another element of their singing. After a few minutes, I will ask, "Was your jaw free on that last exercise?" If the students say, "I don't know," I'll say, "Let's do it again and see what you notice."

I try to avoid simply telling students, "Your jaw is tight," even if that is something I see. Instead, I prefer to redirect their attention back to the jaw so they can make their own assessments. This causes the singers to check back in, observe, and make an adjustment, if needed.

Progressing through the verbal/cognitive stage of specific singing skills means practicing the unfamiliar until it becomes familiar. In this process, there will be some successful tries and some failures, each of which will begin to inform our successive attempts IF our attempts are done with focus and awareness.

As I have mentioned before, there are some elements of our singing that are more developed and some that are less developed. It may be human nature to avoid practicing the skills that are less developed since they tend to frustrate us. But without doing the work of focused repetition, we won't progress beyond the first stage of motor learning.

What elements of your singing are in the verbal/cognitive stage? How have you been doing in working toward your semester goals so far?

Now go practice.

Failure is the only option

[Edit: A revised version of this article has been published on the Classical Singer blog. Please visit https://www.csmusic.net/content/articles/failure-is-the-only-option/]

If you've ever seen the movie Apollo 13, you may remember the famous quote by Gene Kranz (played by Ed Harris), "Failure is not an option!" The funny thing is, Kranz never actually said that in real life, according to Jerry Bostick, one of the key flight controllers responsible for the Apollo 13 rescue and a technical advisor for the movie. Kranz described being interviewed by script writers about what things were really like in Mission Control, saying:

"One of their questions was 'Weren't there times when everybody, or at least a few people, just panicked?' My answer was 'No, when bad things happened, we just calmly laid out all the options, and failure was not one of them.'...Only months later did I learn that when they got in their car to leave, [script writer Bill Broyles] started screaming, 'That's it! That's the tag line for the whole movie, "Failure is not an option."'"

Much like we do in the voice studio, when Kranz and his colleagues were presented with challenges, they worked to identify several possible paths to success. With lives in danger, like in the Apollo 13 situation, they wanted to work out any bugs before they implemented their rescue mission. Even though singing does not feature such high stakes, we also try to work out our strategies in the practice room so that mistakes don't happen in performances.

Although no one sets out to fail, the reality is that failed attempts help us home in on what does work. In fact, according to a recent study, it's actually required for long-term success.

An article by David Noonan in Scientific American profiles the work of a team of researchers at Northwestern University led by Dashun Wang. In their research, originally published in Nature, the group looked at the success and failure rates of people engaging in various activities, including venture capital startup investments, applying for National Institutes of Health grants, and even launching terrorist attacks.

One of their major conclusions is, as Wang states, "Every winner begins as a loser." In other words, everyone who was eventually successful first had to experience some form of failure.

This may not be all that surprising. But what is surprising is that the people who succeeded and the people who failed basically had the same number of attempts. This seems to contradict the conventional wisdom of "Just keep trying and eventually you'll get it." As the article states:

"It turns out that trying again and again only works if you learn from your previous failures. The idea is to work smart, not hard. 'You have to figure out what worked and what didn’t, and then focus on what needs to be improved instead of thrashing around and changing everything,' says Wang. 'The people who failed didn’t necessarily work less [than those who succeeded]. They could actually have worked more; it’s just that they made more unnecessary changes.'"

The other big takeaway from the study is that the sooner people made another attempt after a failure, the more likely they were to succeed. Conversely, the longer they waited to try again, the less likely they were to succeed.

I think this research has three significant implications for singing.

First, we can't just go through the motions of vocal exercises, mindlessly doing them over and over. That may help keep our muscles conditioned but it will not help develop technique. The more conscious and observant we are of the process, the more we can make intelligent adjustments to what we are doing instead of, as stated above, "thrashing around and changing everything." This is the "work smarter, not harder" idea.

Second, when we fail or make mistakes or make sounds we don't like, the sooner we try again, the more likely we will be to succeed. If frustration causes us to walk away and take a break, and keeps us from another attempt, we are less likely to find success.

Third, instead of avoiding failure, this research implies that failure is actually necessary for success. It's a step no one can skip. Getting something right on the first try doesn't mean we'll be able to do it consistently. We have to fail, make a thoughtful adjustment, fail differently, make another thoughtful adjustment, and so on, until we are consistently successful. This is completely in line with the stages of motor learning we discussed in the November blog (stages we will discuss more in the coming weeks).

Back in August, I wrote a blog that outlined four parameters for setting goals. Then you all identified three specific goals for the semester. For this first blog of 2020, I'd like you to revisit those goals. In the comments below, list three goals you have for this semester. Some may be the same, some may be slightly different, others may be completely different. Regardless, be as specific as you can in determining how you want to improve and what you want to accomplish in our time together this spring.

Welcome back, and Happy New Year!

Now go practice.

P.S. To read other blogs on the subject of failure (riveting, I know) click here and here.

The sun is rising on a new semester. Let's get back to work!