The effect of mental practice on violin performance

The purpose of this study is to investigate whether or not mental practice causes a difference in the performance and instrumental memory levels of the violin students in the GÜGEF. It also investigates the students? use of mental practice in association with the gender and the education levels.This study uses the descriptive and experimental methods together. In the descriptive part, `String Instrument Study Mental Perception and Attitude Scale? is used in order to define students? perception and attitude towards mental practice. In the experimental part of the study, mental and video-mental studies are prepared and applied in the framework of repeated measures model, on the G.U. G.E. F. Music Education Department violin students. After each study application, two videos were recorded; one with the piece performed from the memory in order to measure the instrumental memory; and the other performed from the scores in order to measure the performance. These records/measurements are evaluated by the experts using `String Instrument Study Mental Perception and Attitude Scale? and `Instrumental Memory Measurement Table?.Results show no difference between the gender and education level, on the perception and the attitude towards the mental practice. Following the experiments, results on the instrumental memory show that mental and video-mental practice has positive effect on all the sub-levels of the instrumental memory (i.e. melody, fingering, bow and total memory) with respect to pre-test results. However, adding video to mental practice does not have a significant effect. Results on the performance (i.e. performed from the scores) show that mental and video-mental practice does not have significant effects. As a result, it is found that mental practice helps the development of instrumental memory, rather than performance.