The Expert Mind

Vicissidude writes "Teachers in sports, music, and other fields tend to believe that talent matters and that they know it when they see it. In fact, they appear to be confusing ability with precocity. There is usually no way to tell, from a recital alone, whether a young violinist's extraordinary performance stems from innate ability or from years of Suzuki-style training. The preponderance of psychological evidence indicates that experts are made, not born. In fact, it takes approximately a decade of heavy labor to master any field. Even child prodigies, such as Gauss in mathematics, Mozart in music, and Bobby Fischer in chess, must have made an equivalent effort, perhaps by starting earlier and working harder than others. It is no coincidence that the incidence of chess prodigies multiplied after László Polgár published a book on chess education. The number of musical prodigies underwent a similar increase after Mozart's father did the equivalent two centuries earlier."

Comments

the same thing

[macadamia_harold]

Teachers in sports, music, and other fields tend to believe that talent matters and that they know it when they see it. In fact, they appear to be confusing ability with precocity.

Except that at a young age, are not tremendous ability and precocity the same thing?

Partial credit

[PresidentEnder]

While I believe, definitely, that it has to take work to master something, and that work is the defining characteristic of a grand master, it's also important to have some inborn ability. You can't be a chess master or genius mathematician or amazing athlete without some genetic preponderance toward intelligence or coordination or speed. This becomes extremely evident in bodybuilding; genetic makeup matters big time. Yes, I realize the article is focused on intellectual pursuits, but the same thing is still true.

Re:Partial credit

[kripkenstein]

Chess isn't a good measure either. A COMPUTER can play chess. The rules and strategies are almost all worked out, so it takes only practice to learn them.

Software chessplayers can beat human ones, but they play completely differently. For example, human chessplayers see only a few moves ahead, while software chessplayers rely more on brute-force search to find good moves.

Computers beat humans at chess not because we understand chess, but because we found a way to make computers do it well, which is different.

Re:Partial credit

[kfg]

. . .four lifetimes would not suffice to learn all of music theory.

But this is also equally true for everyone; and the one who works at it the most will learn the most.

Of course learning properly also helps. Did you learn theory from a book at the piano/guitar; or did you sit down with a koto (or better yet a gu zheng, more strings) and meter stick and actually try to tune it by physical measurement and by ear?

You'll learn more about temperament that way in a couple of weeks than the average music student learns in a decade by modern methods. It might even disabuse you of the notion that there are "right" and "wrong" notes, merely consonant and dissonant intervals; and even some of those are a matter of cultural training.

KFG

Uhh, sorta.

[bm_luethke]

You will never find a "master" at what they do that does not practice and have lots of experience. That is, of course, a given. I don't think any one says otherwise - to a large extent the article implies it. No coach thinks raw talent alone will win the olympics, it takes practice, practice, practice, and more practice.

It also requires Chess to be a near perfect look into intellect and ability - the author obviously understands this as roughly half the article is an attemp to prove it. If this is not true then the whole theory falls apart and I do not think enough is shown for this to be true (not being in that field I do not know if it is considered a given, but again I doubt it is. I can not see chess having much bearing to archery).

I can assure you that innate talent exists. It is not hard to find. I have two fairly good archery students - one shoots only the one day of our course and the other shoots at home every day. If hard work and focus was the deciding factor the wrong one is getting much higer scores.

We can all find people in our own schooling that exemplifies this. In science/math courses I did very very little and was generally one of the higer grades. I knew quite a number of people who were obsessed and spent WAY more time than I ever did who never came anywhere close to my ability. I knew people who surpassed me that worked less and some that worked more. Of course I still spent quite a bit of time at it. I could not learn how something worked without reading about it or taking it apart, yet I needed only to do so once or twice. Some could do it hundreds of times and never get it, some would only need to get halfway before they understood it. That's innate talent.

It's so trivial to find people that break this theory I can not see how it is talked about much. Obviously hard work will get you a long ways, pure talent on never using it is horrid, and pure talent with hard work is what makes world champions. I can (and have) practiced enough to be a champion in Archery, I'm nowhere close and I'll never be - I just can not hold the bow steady enough. No amount of practice will overcome it.

Coaches and teachers say this because after running thousands of people through thier programs it is obvious that a thing called "talent" exists.

And, lastly, they gloss over that all of thier examples were considered prodigies even before they invested years and years of hard work, to be a world champion requires both. The study pre-assumes that talent is the same, notes that practice is different so it *must* be the cause (how can you say that with more than one variable?). How about we try and hold everything that affects the outcome constant that we can (practice, initial novice level, user motivation, etc) and see if everyone performs at the same level. I bet they do not. Right now there are too many variables from the study listed to draw any conclusion - talent could very well still play a large role, it has not been ruled out. Just as it is obvious that hard work is needed to be a world champion it should be obvious that not including talent will make talent irrelevant in thier study. Unless you control or adjust for a variable you *can not* make any conclsuion on how much it affects your outcome.

Ability to accept training

[syousef]

Theres a fundamental truth different people pick different things up more quickly than others. Some are "naturally" good at math and others at sport (and some at both but not nitting). Not everyone's going to react like Mozart to the same music training.

So if you're good at something from the start you're going to get more positive feedback earlier on and you're going to get further and progress more quickly through the same training. But fundamentally yes both the gifted person and the talentless hack are going to need to be exposed to the same tools, techniques and ideas to progress in anything. Mozart wouldn't have gotten anywhere with the piano and orchestras if he'd grown up in a culture that didn't have pianos and orchestras. With his innate abilities perhaps he'd have been Africa's best drummer or a killer on the diggeri doo instead :-)

Another thing. It's important to do things you're not good at for a couple of reasons. One is that some things you're not good at are fun...go to a karoke bar and you won't see people trying to perfect their world class opera voices. You don't even discover what you like if you don't try and life is there to be embraced and tasted. The other is that not everyone progresses at the same rate. It is possible to spend weeks (but probably not more than a few weeks) and make a breakthrough in understanding that suddenly means you improve dramatically even if you're never going to be world class.

However yes, nothing replaces hard work and training. If you're good at something without these you could be much better with the correct focused training.

Re:Interesting, but a little one sided

[kfg]

I guess spending lots of time playing counts as training. . .

Yes, there's even a word for "lots of time playing." The word is:

"Practice."

You might have heard an aphorism using that word.

I'll bet he wasn't very good at the subjects he ignored at Columbia. There just might be a relationship.

KFG

Formal study vs. Hard Work

[illuminatedwax]

This article is going to bring up the subject of formal study vs. hard work. It's very simple: You will get nowhere without hard work. But you will go farther and faster with formal study.

Example: Dizzy Gillespie was an amazing trumpet player, but the way he played was all wrong. Does this mean that our idea of the "right" way to play is wrong? No; Dizzy succeeded despite playing the wrong way, simply because he practiced so goddamned hard. But if you want to learn to play the trumpet, should you just shirk all advice and just practice? Of course not. You'll be a better player if you don't have obstacles - and the "right" way is "right" because it has fewer obstacles. Just don't think you can relax, because you'll get blown away by those who are working hard.

Now take for example the computer programmer. The computer programmer who studies on his own not only has to figure out what is going on from scratch (this is actually beneficial), but he has has to figure out what to study. An education in computer science will prepare this programmer for that. But all too often the computer programmer with an education uses this as a crutch - they soon become stagnant.

FAQ
Can you succeed without working hard? No.
So, do you need education? Maybe not, but it helps.
Would you be better at what you want to do if you have education? Undoubtedly.

Re:Metatalent?

[poliopteragriseoapte]

I disagree - I believe people can be very different at their talents - the minds of different people can work in very different ways.

No matter how hard I tried, I was always terrible at soccer and at juggling. I just don't have enough control of my body for that. On the other hand, learning mathematics has always been effortless for me, and I can "view" in my head 3 and 4-dimensional functions with ease. Regardless of how hard I try, I am definitely NOT good at picking up the correct accent of foreign languages - even languages that I have been speaking for decades. Other people can sound like native speakers in a couple of years. I spent lots hours trying to learn chess, and just about anybody could defeat me. At Go, in scarcely a few months I became good enough to hold my own with most players in my city.

The belief that "education does all" is the kind of belief you have before you see enough students, and especially, before you have children. After that, you know very well that kids are born with very definite personalities and abilities - you can educate them, but the personality and basic abilities are there from day 1, perhaps not fully expressed, but there.

Education, or training, just feeds the prepared mind or body.

Of course

[Colin Smith]

The idea that they just worked harder, or rather, better than you is uncomfortable. It means that you're just lazy, don't have the necessary drive or don't know how to train.

It's much easier to believe that they are just innately better and it's not really your fault that you can't reach their level.

Re:Of course

[i_should_be_working]

You know, for me it's the reverse. I'm much more comfortable thinking 'I could have been great had I put the effort into it', than I would be thinking that I'm just inherently not good enough. I'd rather be lazy than stupid.

I guess I just don't like the idea of someone being 'better' than me. If someone trains, or works harder than me, that doesn't make them better, just a harder worker, which I don't mind.

Or it's evidence of better training and motivation

[Colin Smith]

You're interested in the subject, you learn it without seeing that learning as study. You work just as hard at it but don't see it as work, it's fun, your motivation is higher than people who see it as work.

Read "The Pianist's Talent"

[Half-pint HAL]

There is a commonly-held belief among teachers:

"I was taught it this way, I'm good at it, so that's the right way of teaching it." Really, what "it" is doesn't matter. This belief is held by language teachers, sports coaches, music teachers and many more. This belief is then supported with examples of pupils/students who are also good at their particular "it".

Over the last hundred years, many many teachers have studied teaching or their disciplines in new ways which have disproved this commonly-believed falsehood.

The first example I'm aware of is described in Harold Taylor's book The Pianist's Talent. In it, he examines the work of a turn-of-the-19th/20th-century Parisian piano teacher by the name of Raymond Thiberge. Thiberge was vexed by the vastly differing -- even contradictory -- advice coming from the various piano conservatories in Paris, so he went to all the individual conservatories for further study. In one, he would be told that there should be tension in the front of the forearm; in the next, tension in the back of the forearm. Thiberge was blind, so to study another's technique he had to touch them. When he lay his hands on any of the teachers, he found that they all had one technique: no tension anywhere.

The teachers were not successful because they followed their professed technique, but because they didn't. Worse, their pupils who they used as proof of the efficacy of their techniques also used a completely different technique than that which they were taught. Worse still, teachers were dismissing their failures as not the teacher's fault -- they were simply untalented -- while the reason they failed was because they were doing what they were told. To quote shlmco, another \.er: Too many people think practice makes perfect, when in reality, most people who do so simply perfect their mistakes. In another example, over the last few decades, top-level swimming coaching has changed dramatically, leading to athletes capable of such incredible feats as the Thorpedo's alleged ability to cross a swimming pool in two strokes. The trigger for this was the invention of the underwater tracking camera now so commonly used in major competitive events. Traditional teaching of front-crawl stroke said that the arms should travel in an "S-stroke" and that the fingers should be closed against each other. Coaches who were former gold-medal winners professed this technique as the technique that had won them their fame, but when the cameras started rolling, suddenly people could see that their hands were travelling in an almost straight line, and that their fingers were slightly apart. It became noticed that coaches were ignoring their star students' "non-standard" technique because they were doing so well, but were constantly "correcting" the technique of their other students, hindering their progress.

I was discussing all this with a Scottish country dance teacher recently, trying to demonstrate that another commonly-held notion -- the idea that there are different teaching techniques suited to different people -- was at best an overstatement, at worst a complete falacy, and in any case a result of bad teaching practice. At this point he tied it in to his own personal experience -- one tricky dance-step, the "pas-de-bas", which his student's could never get, although he taught it as all the top teachers do. He eventually came to the conclusion that it was a teaching problem, not a learning problem, so he stopped to study it. At every possible opportunity, he watched the feet of the top dancers until he saw what they were doing and realised that it was not what he was teaching, but it is what he was doing. It is now a point of frustration to him that the teaching fraternity continues to teach it incorrectly when it is perfectly possible to teach it correctly.

Effort will always fail to bear fruit if misdirected. Concientious hard work will make matters worse if the teaching is wrong. In fact, as the Inner Game philosophy is now trying to popularise,