The role of deliberate practice in the acquisition of expert performance
Anders Ericsson, Ralf Krampe and Clemens Tesch-Römer compared groups of violinists at the Music Academy of West Berlin who were rated best, good and less accomplished. They found that the amount of solitary practice accumulated by age 18 tracked the group differences, and they gave the name deliberate practice to practice in which students work alone with goals and methods set with a master teacher. They argued that accumulated practice largely accounted for differences in performance level and rejected any important role for innate ability. The study is the basis of the deliberate-practice account of expertise, and the 2019 replication tests its main claim.
Anders Ericsson, Ralf Krampe and Clemens Tesch-Römer compared groups of violinists at the Music Academy of West Berlin who were rated best, good and less accomplished. They found that the amount of solitary practice accumulated by age 18 tracked the group differences, and they gave the name deliberate practice to practice in which students work alone with goals and methods set with a master teacher. They argued that accumulated practice largely accounted for differences in performance level and rejected any important role for innate ability. The study is the basis of the deliberate-practice account of expertise, and the 2019 replication tests its main claim.
Written from the read 2026-10-26 as described in the full text of the 2019 replication on PubMed Central; the 1993 abstract itself was not read.
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Ericsson, K. A., Krampe, R. T., & Tesch-Römer, C. (1993). The role of deliberate practice in the acquisition of expert performance. Psychological Review, 100(3), 363-406. doi:10.1037/0033-295X.100.3.363