The Science of Touch
"Touch comes before sight, before speech. It is the first language and the last, and it always tells the truth." – Margaret Atwood
Touchscreens vs. Buttons
Touchscreens are amazing for displaying visual media – but when it comes to actually interacting with an interface to accomplish a task, they fall short. The reason for this lies right under our skin. (Well, actually, inside of it).
Sensory receptors in the skin called mechanoreceptors – which are activated by pressure, distortion or vibration – provide information to the brain about various characteristics of touched objects.
Blausen.com staff (2014). "Medical gallery of Blausen Medical 2014". WikiJournal of Medicine 1 (2). DOI:10.15347/wjm/2014.010. ISSN 2002-4436.
There are four different kinds of mechanoreceptors, each responsive to different kinds of stimuli, with a different type of response: Merkel corpuscles, Ruffini corpuscles, Meissner corpuscles and Pacinian corpuscles. These four types of receptors – along with free nerve endings and hair follicles in the skin – combine to send the brain a complete picture of the object the skin is touching.
Mechanoreceptors are fundamental to our hands-on interactions with the physical world.
From using handheld tools, to drinking from a glass, to playing the piano, the sensory feedback they relay to the brain helps guide the motor neurons responsible for moving our body parts to achieve a given task.
Regrettably, the smooth and uniform nature of touchscreens makes for less “touch” feedback available for the brain. To confirm whether you’ve effected a change on the screen, you have to rely on other senses, such as sight or sound, consuming attention. With a button, however, the “click” you feel after pushing it instantly lets the brain know your intended action has been completed, so you can keep your attention on the task at hand.
Enter BENJAMIN.
Making real progress in learning a physical skill – such as playing a musical instrument – requires your full, undivided attention. Benjamin makes this possible by eliminating the guesswork from managing your iPad. Physical buttons and knobs provide immediate feedback, so you use less mental energy on controlling the media, and more on playing. Set a loop, tweak volume with the slider, and practice difficult parts repeatedly – all without losing focus on your instrument.
Because fewer touchscreen-induced struggles equals better focus.
Cognitive Switching and Micro-Friction
The tiny hiccups secretly spoiling your learning progress.
The “micro-interuptions” imposed by imprecise touchscreens – where you break focus to ensure you’ve achieved the playback change you’ve intended – kill your practice flow. They likely don’t feel like much. But they repeatedly break your focus. And focus is where the learning happens.
The “cognitive switching” between thinking about what you’re actually learning (a tricky solo, a challenging dance move, etc.) and the task of navigating three menus to slow the video playback down corrupts your brain's ability to assimilate the skill you're actually working on.
Fight the friction!
Reliable, tactcile controls remove this friction. So you can stay in the moment longer, making your practice sessions more productive, and more satisfying.
Touchscreens are so common that you’re likely not even aware of this learning friction. But once you experience the intuitive, reliable action of physical controls, you’ll be amazed at the change. Buttons are consistent – they disappear into muscle memory, eliminating all the little hiccups imposed by hunting for an icon or imprecisely dragging on a progress bar.
Changing the Nature of Practice
"Practice doesn't make perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect."
– Vince Lombardi
Repetitions vs. Time
Now that your practice is “friction free”, a key metric emerges: repetitions of a skill per session. It’s not that you're spending more time learning. You’re now able to perform more effective repetitions per unit time.
By eliminating the control friction a touchscreen imposes, you increase:
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Repetitions per minute
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Precision per repetition
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Attention per repetition
That’s a compounding effect, not incremental. You’ve increased your “practice density,” and you can enjoy this benefit in a number of ways:
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It’s more enjoyable to practice, because you’re making more progress faster
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You don’t get fed up and “just watch instead of practicing”
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You can feel good about getting more out of the cost of lessons
It’s a bit cerebral – but Benjamin literally changes the structure of practice itself.
Tap Into the Spacing Effect
For maximum efficiency.
Intuitively, repetition is a key success factor in learning. None of us mastered our instrument in one session. The notion of “10,000 hours”, while a bit crude, is rooted in legitimate scientific evidence. More practice is better. But the practice has to be focused, consistent and distraction-free. We’ve shown above how tactile controls help dramatically. Keeping you in the flow. Focused.
The spacing effect is a proven cognitive phenomenon which shows learning is much more effective if done in small, manageable chunks that are repeated over time. One big cramming session once a week just won’t cut it. This is where the software side of the Benjamin package helps. While it’s super simple to set a loop with Benjamin, it gets really valuable when you save it, name it and store it in your playlists. All in the Benjamin App.
Now, you can instantly return to that segment over and over. Not that same day, cramming, but tomorrow – or Wednesday – leveraging the spacing effect. Not more practice, but better practice methods. Bang. Quicker learning, more solos nailed. More folks in the crowd blown away. More joy from your playing.
Thanks to science.
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