Unit 3: Selection Vocabulary 3

The question is this: is there such a thing as innate talent? The obvious answer is yes. Not every hockey player born in January ends up playing at the professional level. Only some do—the innately talented ones.

The students who would end up the best in their class began to practice more than everyone else: six hours a week by age nine, eight hours a week by age twelve, sixteen hours a week by age fourteen, and up and up, until by the age of twenty they were practicing—that is, purposefully and single-mindedly playing their instruments with the intent to get better—well over thirty hours a week.

The idea that excellence at performing a complex task requires a critical minimum level of practice surfaces again and again in studies of expertise.

The idea that excellence at performing a complex task requires a critical minimum level of practice surfaces again and again in studies of expertise.

It seems that it takes the brain this long to assimilate all that it needs to know to achieve true mastery.

If one student takes an AP class, you can expect that his or her siblings will also take that class as they move through the grades. Extrapolating outward, you can predict a correlation between parents’ intelligence and that of their children.

Recent brain studies indicate that the brain is malleable over time. It grows and develops and matures, just as the rest of the body does.

How many times have you heard a friend sigh, “I just can’t get this, I’m not smart enough”? That self-defeating attitude is all too common, but it assumes a fixed level of intelligence that is belied by history.

Ulric Neisser of Cornell University posited that the so-called Flynn effect was due to the way humans are inundated with visual images on television, in video games, and in ads.

Such children hold an implicit belief that intelligence is innate and fixed, making striving to learn seem far less important than being (or looking) smart.

In particular, attributing poor performance to a lack of ability depresses motivation more than does the belief that lack of effort is to blame.

Subsequent studies revealed that the most persistent students do not ruminate about their own failure much at all but instead think of mistakes as problems to be solved.

Similarly, hard work and discipline contribute more to school achievement than IQ does.
Such lessons apply to almost every human endeavor.