trial and error decision making/ learning vs premortem decision making/ learning

Mind is a great natural statistic machine.  I witness the decision making based on statistic/ experiences among my piano students all the time, especially when they sight-read a new piece.  That is to execute the next move mainly depending on the past experiences and memories of the patterns they have played, with lesser degree of visual recognition of the patterns applied to their processing.  In other words, they rely heavily on the probabilities of certain movement patterns (yes, we often go to # and flat notes with No. 2 and 4 fingers due to the simpler pieces introduced for beginner and intermediate students often have such hand positions). 

From my experience in both my own learning as well as from teaching, the most effective approach on procedural learning is not the trial and error.  The reason is that if you repeat the same errors enough times to cement its motor/aural memory correlating to the visual input, you are more likely to recognize the error pattern as the commanded execution pattern of the visual input whether you like it or not. We usually try with errors until we get it right - that makes us to play (in the piano playing) the right pattern only once and many more times of the errors.  Especially considering the nature of tactile memory, once the motor pattern is executed and corresponding multi-levels of recognition among involving sensory (visual and aural) are established, it remains fairly strongly in our memory system. 

Whereas if you made one error and/or not having clarity in motor anticipation in relation to visual input, we could certainly use the pre-mortem approach and examine the input carefully before executing the corresponding tasks.  I have tested this among my students (N > 20; ages between 6 to 70) and they learn more effectively with less errors (small obvious accidental glitches are OK) and mastering the tasks in shorter period of time.  It takes time to learn how to "learn" this particular way - yet it seems to be acquired more easily by youths and adults over 13 to 15 years old or so than those who are younger, possibly correlating to motor-prioritized, repetition-centered learning tendency of children and the development of visual system. 

Anyhow, "reinforcement" of the learnt information is only relevant when the learnt information is the correlating action to the visual stimuli, not used the sense to gradually improve the quality of the actions in the piano study. 

Based on what I have observed among students' behavior, if we could treat our own learning as if we "program" ourselves with intentional action execution (anticipation of action, awareness of action in control, then reinforce such by repetitions), we achieve so much more on the basic visuo-motor tasks such as piano playing.  Since music takes the basic visuo-motor learning before the expression and musicality are added to form the art, it is a perfect medium to observe and study how human learns motor-oriented tasks through visual input (as instruction). 

​Something to think about for your next learning experience involving visual input and some extent of motor coordination...