Chapter 8 - But What About Natural Talent?

Congenital amusia

extremely rare medical condition in which people are born tone-deaf

worked

==Study:==

Savants don’t have a miraculous talent; instead they have _____ for it, just like anyone else

Autistic

==Study:==

_____ savants are much more likely than the non-savants to be very detail-oriented and prone to repetitive behaviors

better

==Study:==

When examining chess-playing ability in children who are just learning to play, those with higher IQs do indeed become _____ players faster

no

==Study:==

Adult chess players have ____ better visuospatial abilities than normal non-chess-playing adults

higher

==Study:==

Skilled adult chess players (even grandmasters) do not have systematically ______ IQs than other adults with similar levels of education

no

==Study:==

Go masters score _____ higher on IQ tests than people in the general population

practice, better, were

==Study:==

* The amount of chess ______ that the children had done was the biggest factor in explaining how well they played chess, with more practice being correlated with better scores on the various measures of chess skill.
* Smaller but still significant factor was intelligence, with higher IQ being related to ______ chess skills
* Visuospatial intelligence wasn’t the most important factor, but rather memory and processing speed ______

practice

==Study:==

Among chess elite players, the amount of ____ was the major factor determining their chess skills, but intelligence played no noticeable role

lower, better

==Study:==

Chess players in the elite group with ___ IQs were slightly better players than those in the elite group with higher IQs because they tended to practice more, which improved their chess game to the point that they played ____

no

==Study:==

The average IQ of scientists is certainly higher than the average IQ of the general population, but among scientists there is _____ correlation between IQ and scientific productivity

benefit

==Study:==

Scientists in at least some fields need an IQ score of around 110 to 120 to be successful, but that higher score doesn’t confer any additional _____

vocabulary

==Study:==

Factors such as the child’s temperament and ability to pay attention to a parent influence the size of _____ the child will build

better

==Study:==

Infants who paid more attention to a parent when he/she was reading a book and pointing to the pictures in the book grew up to have a much _____ vocabulary at five years of age than infants who paid less attention

Innate

_____ characteristics play a much smaller and different role than many people generally assume

practice

Paganini’s performance was the product of long and careful ______

practice

There has never been a convincing case for anyone developing extraordinary abilities without intense, extended ______

serious

The first serious compositions that we can attribute to Mozart were written when he was 15 or 16 years old, after more than a decade of ______ practice

practice

Mario Lemieux had a lot of ______ before people began noticing what a “natural” talent he had

dunking

Donald Thomas had trained in the high jump while also developing his ability to jump high off of one foot through his practice ______

challenged

Most savants are mentally ______ in one way or another

years

Donny, an autistic savant, developed his abilities over ______ of working with and thinking about dates

experts

Savants’ abilities indicate that these are acquired skills, so that they developed those abilities similarly as other _______

practiced

In our culture, the reason that most non-singers cannot sing is simply that they never _____ to develop the ability to sing

practicing

People do not stop learning and improving because they have reached some innate limits on their performance; they stop learning and improving because they stopped ______ or never started

born

There is no evidence that anyone is ______ without the innate talent to sing or do math or perform any other skill

cognitive

It is best not to equate IQ with innate intelligence but simply to stick with the facts and think of IQ as some ______ factor (measured by IQ tests) that has been shown to predict certain things, such as success in school

not

Higher intelligence is _____ correlated with better chess playing among adults

quickly

When children are just beginning to learn chess, their intelligence (performance on IQ tests) plays a role in how _____ they can learn the game and reach a certain minimal level of competence

representations

With enough solitary practice, the mental representations become so useful and powerful in playing chess that the major thing separating two players is not their intelligence but the quality and quantity of their mental _____ and how effectively they use them

smaller

While people with certain innate characteristics (IQ) may have an advantage when first learning a skill, that advantage gets ______ over time, and eventually the amount and the quality of practice take on a much larger role in determining how skilled a person becomes

requirements

Outside of some very basic physical traits, such as height and body size in sports, we have no solid evidence that such minimum _____ exist

genetically

Among those people who have practiced enough and have reached a certain level of skill, there is no evidence that any _____ determined abilities play a role in deciding who will be among the best

predict

It is really difficult to _____ who will rise to the top of any given field

directly

If there are indeed genetic differences that play a role in influencing how well someone performs, they aren’t likely to be something that affects the relevant skills _____, such as a “music gene” or a “math gene”

engage, effective

Because we know that practice is the most important factor in determining a person’s ultimate achievement, it makes sense that if genes do play a role, their role would play out through shaping how likely a person is to ______ in deliberate practice or how _____ that practice is likely to be

prophecy

If you believe in innate talent, you will encourage and support the “talented” ones and discourage the rest, creating the self-fulfilling _____

potential, develop

The best way to avoid the self-fulfilling prophecy is to recognize the ___ in all of us and work to find ways to _____ it