More research on the roots of talent.

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/03/what-is-success-true-grit/

In the Talent Code, the author cites a 1970s study by Martin Eisenstadt that tracked the 573 people notable enough to warrant a half-page or longer article in the Encyclopedia Britannica. This eminent group turned out to have lost their first parent at an average age of 13.9, compared to 19.6 for a control group of some sort. The explanation proposed is that once a parent dies, the kid gets the message, "You are not safe," and she sometimes grits up to compensate, which can lead to mastery or achievement. Of course, that wouldn't always (or even most of the time) be the response, but when looking at exceptions, losing a parent could provide the ignition, so his theory goes.

I'm interested in this field of research about talent, mastering skills, deliberate practice, psychology of learning, etc., not just for learning Chinese, but for many other skills I'm thinking about pursuing. There's this seemingly large burst of popular literature coming out about it, too, with countless articles like this and with books like Outliers, Talent Is Overrated, and The Talent Code talking about it.

I wonder, though, how many people are reading these and seriously putting them into practice as adults? I know we're all learning Chinese or Japanese here, but are many of us who are read this stuff with interest also pursuing mastery of other skills? Or does it tend to be a more idle interest?

I think that even if we don't change our work habits that much, this sort of article helps change the way that we think and talk about talent.

I remember one particular study where they showed that praising a child for intelligence as opposed to effort actually tended to lower the probability that the child would be willing to try something new. That is, if you tell a kid that he's good at math, he will tend to be more reluctant to start to learn the guitar (presumably because he's likely to think it's one of the things he's "not good at"). My own experience was very much along those lines and in fact I only seriously started studying languages a couple of years ago because for years I had thought I was "bad at languages". Now I think about it more as "I used to be lazy at languages" or "I was using the wrong techniques". ;)

James

I think "genetic" talent enables you to progress faster, therefore have more fun and do it more often...if you have short legs and want to be a world-class sprinter, I think your 10000 hours are just a waste of time...and if it would only take practice to be Beethoven there would be a lot of Beethovens running around here, most of them probably Chinese ;-P