The Psychology of TalentAnd Expert Performance

Abe Feinberghttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5J4mWddC70

Natural Talent“Gifted”

“A born writer”

Hard work“If you put your mind to it, you can do anything!”

VS.

Francis Galton

Nature

Vs.

Nurture

Do people have natural talent?

That depends on what you mean.

An unusual natural ability…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVqRT_kCOLI

Kim Peek“Megasavant”

Agenesis of the corpus collosumStephen Wiltshire

Autistic savant

An unusual natural ability

for an entire discipline…?

Anders Ericsson

“Deliberate Practice”

The 10,000 hour rule

What about Mozart? Father was a successful

composer/performer/teacher

Started at age three

Early work was not entirely original

First masterpiece (Piano Concerto No. 9) composed at age 21

That’s 18 years of expert training

Tiger Woods

Father was a teacher and golf fanatic

Started at seven months

Became chess grandmaster at age 15

…after playing for nine years. Bobby Fischer

“Geniuses are made, not born”

László’s experiment:

1. Find a wife

2. Raise children to be chess experts

László Polgár

The Polgár SistersZsuzsa, Zsófia, Judit

All three became chess grandmasters

Judit Polgár Defeated nine world champions

Ranked strongest female chess player in history

Hard work?

Practice?Practicing wrong just makes you

better at doing it wrong.

“Deliberate practice.”

Started in high school

In the NFL draft, 15 teams passed him over

Greatest receiver in NFL history

Records exceed 2nd best by 50 percent

Jerry Rice

1. Worked really, really hard Continued

practice after others went home

Intense six-days-a-week, off-season workouts

5-mile run

10 forty-meter wind sprints

Weight training

Jerry Rice

People attribute success to: Ability

Other people

Luck

Effort

Better predictor of academic success than IQ

The importance of effort

1. Many students do not realize the importance of effort

2. They can learn to do so

3. When they do, their performance goes up

The importance of effort

How can we change student beliefs about effort?

2. Designed practice to target specific needs Spent <1% of

football-related practice playing football

Jerry Rice

Highly designed form of practice

Isolate specific elements of performance

Catch mistakes and target your weak areas Involves continuous feedback

Often requires expert coaching

Highly demanding mentally

Not usually much fun

Lots of repetition Especially spaced repetition

Deliberate Practice

1. Everything you do (or think) involves activation of a neural pathway

2. The more you activate a pathway the faster and more reliable it gets

The Biology of Practicing

Fixed mindset Abilities are

the result of natural talent, unchangeable

Growth mindset Abilities are

the result of effort and effective practice

Growth Mindset

Effort is normal and necessary for growth

Try to learn/improve

Seek challenges

Failure = Need to put in more effort

Success of others = learning opportunity

Open to criticism, with realistic self-concept

Fixed Mindset

Effort indicates lack of talent

Try to look good

Avoid challenges

Failure = It’s pointless, just give up

Success of others = threat

Defensive, with distorted self-concept