Chapter 7 - The Road to Extraordinary 

Studies

• The parents of children who grew up to be mathematicians and neurologists didn’t introduce the children to the particular subject but rather to the appeal of intellectual pursuits in general
• The best teachers encourage their students to think about general patterns and processes, which sparked an intellectual interest that would drive their studies and later their research as mathematicians
• During the last few decades, the performance of master athletes has improved at a much higher rate than that of younger athletes
• The corpus callosum is significantly larger in adult musicians than in adult nonmusicians, but only in those who started practicing before 7 years old
• Some parts of the brain involved in the control of movements are larger in musicians than in nonmusicians but show no difference in size between those who started earlier and those who didn’t
• People who speak 2 or more languages have more gray matter, and the earlier a person learned a second language, the more extra gray matter there is
• People who were simultaneous interpreters had less gray matter than people who could speak the same number of languages due to the different contexts in which the learning took place
• When trying to develop a perfect pitch in adults, those who saw the biggest improvements were those who started off with the best ear
• Nobel Prize winners published scientific papers earlier than most of their peers and published more papers throughout their careers than others
• \

Key Terms

• Nigel effect: based on Nigel Richards, who was incredible at Scrabble and forced other players to look for ways to increase their own skill levels

General Information

• The desire to play serves as a child’s initial motivation to try out one thing or another
• Future experts’ playful interaction with what has caught their interest is their first step toward what will eventually become their passion
• The initial curiosity-driven motivation needs to be supplemented with praise or the satisfaction of having developed a certain skill
• Often experts have picked up the particular interests of their parents
• Simply by interacting strongly with their children, parents motivate their children to develop similar interests
• A child who sees an older sibling performing an activity and getting attention and praise from a parent will naturally want to join in and garner some attention and praise as well
• Competition with siblings may be motivating
• Generally, the younger siblings have reached greater heights due to the presence of an older sibling fully engaged in an activity which provides many advantages for them
• The most important factor in the early phase of an expert’s development is maintaining their interest and motivation while skills and habits are being built
• The motivation must ultimately come from within the child, or else it won’t endure
• Parents and teachers can help children to find related activities they enjoy to provide long-term motivation
• Helping children develop mental representations can also increase motivation by increasing their ability to appreciate the skill they are learning
• The motivation starts to shift from external to internal in origin
• People who develop skills in a certain area through years of practice seem to get a great deal of pleasure from engaging in that skill
• In the 3rd phase of an expert’s development, the motivation lies solely with the student, but the family may still play an important support role
• Expertise in some fields is simply unattainable for anyone who doesn’t start training as a child
• Athletes typically attain their peak performance sometime during their 20s
• Older people who continue to train regularly see their performance decrease much less
• The body and the brain are more adaptable during childhood and adolescence than in adulthood
• We can acquire new skills as we age, but the specific way in which we acquire those skills changes as we get older
• Language learning that takes place in adulthood may take place more through getting rid of gray matter that is inefficient
• The skill of recognizing notes can be trained in some adults
• In the 4th stage of an expert’s development, people move beyond the existing knowledge in their field and make unique creative contributions
• Innovators have always worked to become expert performers in their fields before they started breaking new ground
• The process of coming up with innovations for creative geniuses is always long, slow, and iterative
• Creativity goes hand in hand with the ability to work hard and maintain focus over long stretches of time
• Once a pathfinder shows how something can be done, others can learn the technique and follow
• Simply knowing that something is possible drives others to figure it out