I happened to come across the following in an article this morning:
Many of the practice strategies that musicians use are aimed at preventing and recovering from slips. Simple repetition, the most common practice strategy, does not necessarily prevent slips.
....
Another strategy is to practice the piece starting from multiple points within it. Procedural memories often form as chains of actions, with each action triggering the memory for the next action, and starting anywhere but the beginning of the chain is difficult.
If musicians only practice from the beginning, then any momentary distraction (like an audience cough or ringing phone) can break the action chain, and the memory for the next action won't be triggered. Simply knowing that various starting points are available may reduce anxiety enough that memory slips are less likely to occur.
I recognize that.
It would seem that the ability to (fairly) seamlessly recover after a mistake would be helped by practicing each phrase within a tune regularly on its own, as well as doing end-to-end repetition. Then the knowledge that you can easily pick up again should reduce stress and make mistakes less likely.
I suppose this should be obvious, but I never really thought about it before, although I have often noticed that I just can't get some phrases unless I start from what comes before.
Full article: http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-32428022