Summing Up Hours of Any Type of Practice Versus Identifying Optimal Practice Activities
Anders Ericsson comments on a meta-analysis of practice in sport by Macnamara, Moreau and Hambrick. He recaps the 1993 work linking individualised, goal-directed practice with feedback to improvement, and argues that the meta-analysis uses deliberate practice for a very broad category that includes group activities, watching games on television, play and competition. Summing hours of any type of practice implies, he writes, that all types of practice have equal impact on performance. He calls for longitudinal studies with objective performance measures to identify which practice conditions produce improvement.
Anders Ericsson comments on a meta-analysis of practice in sport by Macnamara, Moreau and Hambrick. He recaps the 1993 work linking individualised, goal-directed practice with feedback to improvement, and argues that the meta-analysis uses deliberate practice for a very broad category that includes group activities, watching games on television, play and competition. Summing hours of any type of practice implies, he writes, that all types of practice have equal impact on performance. He calls for longitudinal studies with objective performance measures to identify which practice conditions produce improvement.
Written from the page and abstract at Perspectives on Psychological Science read 2026-10-26.
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Ericsson, K. A. (2016). Summing up hours of any type of practice versus identifying optimal practice activities: Commentary on Macnamara, Moreau, & Hambrick (2016). Perspectives on Psychological Science, 11(3), 351-354. doi:10.1177/1745691616635600