Note-level singing correctness rises with practice repetition in a negatively accelerated curve, gaining about 7 percentage points over 30 repetitions¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study (2 entries) · associational r1–r2 · q2 · i0 negligible
Currency · newest study 2026 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person

Subclaims¶

q2 i0 Mean correctness increased from 0.656 on the first practice of a pitch to 0.727 on the thirtieth, with the largest gains in the first ten repetitions; the article reports the standardized effect as small (Cohen's h ≈ 0.15). → Wei 2026 q2 i0 Within a fixed cohort of learner–pitch trajectories reaching 30 repetitions, correctness rose from 0.577 to 0.727 (gain 0.150), indicating genuine within-learner learning rather than survivorship. → Wei 2026 (2)

Evidence¶

Wei 2026¶

Wei, Wang and Dong. (2026). Cognitive and skill acquisition trajectories in school-based music education: evidence from Chinese classrooms. Frontiers in Psychology. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2026.1905847

q2 · i0 · associational · r1

Descriptive repetition-curve analysis (Figure 3) of the singKT corpus, aggregating within-student practice ranks across the population. The article reports the curve as "negatively accelerated" and states the repetition gain corresponds to "Cohen's h ≈ 0.10 and ≈ 0.15" — a small standardized effect.

"The mean correctness increased from 0.656 on the first practice to 0.679 on the third, 0.704 on the fifth, and 0.727 on the thirtieth, and the increases were greatest during the first ten repetitions."

Wei 2026 (2)¶

Wei, Wang and Dong. (2026). Cognitive and skill acquisition trajectories in school-based music education: evidence from Chinese classrooms. Frontiers in Psychology. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2026.1905847

q2 · i0 · associational · r2

Robustness re-analysis on the fixed cohort of 17,518 learner–pitch trajectories reaching at least thirty repetitions (11.8% of first-attempt trajectories). Because the cohort is fixed across ranks, the authors state the increase "cannot be produced by selective persistence"; the corresponding standardized effect is small (Cohen's h ≈ 0.15).

"Within this cohort mean correctness rose from 0.577 at the first practice to 0.648 at the fifth, 0.679 at the tenth, 0.707 at the twentieth and 0.727 at the thirtieth, a gain of 0.150"

Discussion¶

Related Claims¶

• Low-register pitches are sung more accurately than high-register pitches in Chinese classrooms, reproducing register compression at scale — related
• Across a geometry curriculum, overall percent correct stays fairly constant over time while percent correct on actions involving a single skill increases, as ACT-R's knowledge-component claim predicts — related
• Accumulated deliberate practice is associated with performance, explaining a domain-dependent share of its variance: about a quarter in games, 4% in education and under 1% in professions — a broader claim this one bears on
• Rate of improvement in addition practice shows negative acceleration, with the first half of practice the more productive — a broader claim this one bears on
• Individual learning curves rise by irregular increments with occasional losses, with plateau-like periods attributed to changes in method and waning interest — related