Ten Thousand Hours

[Riku3220]

No one answered, do guitarists in famous bands have more than 10k hours? Would that be enough to be good enough?

 

Learn math. 10,000/24 = ~416 days

 

 

 

416 days is the minimum amount of time to complete the 10K hours. A more reasonable time like 1 hour a day would take about 27 years.

[EarthySun]

Multiple successful people were interviewed, and results of the interviews (and of much testing) has shown that the Ten Thousand Hour Rule is true.

 

 

 

Without actually reading the book this statement pops out.

 

 

 

If they only interviewed people for who the 10k hour rule worked and did not take a random sample of people then the book is completly biased and not scientific at all.

 

 

 

Very well spotted. :thumbup:

 

 

 

Have you had any formal training in statistics/science by any chance?

 

 

 

I suppose you could read the book, and I was just giving an example. It also talks about things related to their successes, such as amazing luck. However, they couldn't have been successful without ten thousand hours in one particular field.

[FlameHawk18]

Music theory.

[Pan_Nx]

A foreign language.

[deathdrow]

Anyone think of lovemaking? That'd be pretty awesome.

[Kaphias]

I've read this book as well, most parts were good but it got a little boring towards the end.

 

 

 

I have no clue what I'd choose. Probably some musical instrument, piloting, or drawing.

[Zygimantas]

A foreign language.

It wouldn't take you Ten Thousand hours, unless its a very complicated language.

[Giordano]

Drawing.

 

 

 

I'm interested in cartoon animation and 3D animation but can't draw for cabbage. -.-

[Pan_Nx]

A foreign language.

It wouldn't take you Ten Thousand hours, unless its a very complicated language.

 

Good point.

 

 

 

Probably computer programming or photoshop then.

[Albel]

Music theory.

 

I change my answer to this :)

[bewareitsandrew]

inb4runescape

 

edit: darn.

 

 

 

 

 

To be honest, I would pick a stringed instrument like violin or cello. I already play the violin, and I love to do it, but I kind of dislike orderly practicing. For this reason, I'm pretty out of it this summer.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Perhaps in other instruments like guitar/bass guitar.

 

Yeah, I play the Viola already, I would probably choose it in that. I haven't practiced at all this summer either :-#

 

I've wanted to learn cello, I never got the opportunity

[warri0r45]

Multiple successful people were interviewed, and results of the interviews (and of much testing) has shown that the Ten Thousand Hour Rule is true.

 

 

 

Without actually reading the book this statement pops out.

 

 

 

If they only interviewed people for who the 10k hour rule worked and did not take a random sample of people then the book is completly biased and not scientific at all.

 

 

 

Very well spotted. :thumbup:

 

 

 

Have you had any formal training in statistics/science by any chance?

 

 

 

I suppose you could read the book, and I was just giving an example. It also talks about things related to their successes, such as amazing luck. However, they couldn't have been successful without ten thousand hours in one particular field.

 

 

 

Let me try and get this straight...

 

 

 

So this 10,000 hour rule suggests that to master a particular field of expertise, you need to practice it for 10,000 hours? Do you mean that you need to practice for at least 10,000 hours or that all of a sudden you become a pro when you've racked up that magical figure? I know which one sounds plausible, and it's certainly not the latter.

 

 

 

As people have said, we all learn at different rates, so the notion that all of a sudden you're a pro at something when you notch up 10,000 hours of practice is almost certainly not true. If you're suggesting that there was research proving this, provide the research so we can check it out for ourselves and pick out potential flaws. If you can't provide the research, then I'll remain skeptical.

[Riku3220]

Multiple successful people were interviewed, and results of the interviews (and of much testing) has shown that the Ten Thousand Hour Rule is true.

 

 

 

Without actually reading the book this statement pops out.

 

 

 

If they only interviewed people for who the 10k hour rule worked and did not take a random sample of people then the book is completly biased and not scientific at all.

 

 

 

Very well spotted. :thumbup:

 

 

 

Have you had any formal training in statistics/science by any chance?

 

 

 

I suppose you could read the book, and I was just giving an example. It also talks about things related to their successes, such as amazing luck. However, they couldn't have been successful without ten thousand hours in one particular field.

 

 

 

Let me try and get this straight...

 

 

 

So this 10,000 hour rule suggests that to master a particular field of expertise, you need to practice it for 10,000 hours? Do you mean that you need to practice for at least 10,000 hours or that all of a sudden you become a pro when you've racked up that magical figure? I know which one sounds plausible, and it's certainly not the latter.

 

 

 

As people have said, we all learn at different rates, so the notion that all of a sudden you're a pro at something when you notch up 10,000 hours of practice is almost certainly not true. If you're suggesting that there was research proving this, provide the research so we can check it out for ourselves and pick out potential flaws. If you can't provide the research, then I'll remain skeptical.

 

I think you're underestimating how long 10,000 hours is. If you were to practice whatever skill for all 10,000 hours without stopping you'd be finished in 416 days. That, how ever is unreasonable as we need to eat, sleep, and relax so let's use a more realistic time frame. If someone were to practice a skill for 1 hour a day it'd take about 27 years. 27 years is a very long time and I think no matter how bad you start off you'd be pretty damn good at something if you kept it up for 27 years.

[warri0r45]

Riku, I understand that and it's not what I'm arguing against.

[jemathonical]

Anyone think of lovemaking? That'd be pretty awesome.

 

 

 

I'd prefer to do the 10,000 hours.

[i_love_burritos]

Anyone think of lovemaking? That'd be pretty awesome.

 

 

 

I'd prefer to do the 10,000 hours.

 

 

 

[hide=Google'd]Learn by example.

 

 

 

Practice makes perfect.

 

 

 

Practice, practice and more practice.

 

 

 

An ounce of practice is worth more than tons of preaching.

 

 

 

Practice as if you are the worst, perform as if you are the best.

 

 

 

It's not necessarily the amount of time you spend at practice that counts; it's what you put into the practice.

 

 

 

When you are not practicing, remember, someone somewhere is practicing, and when you meet him he will win.[/hide]

[Furah]

Anyone think of lovemaking? That'd be pretty awesome.

 

 

 

I'd prefer to do the 10,000 hours.

 

I love you man.

[issy2]

Let me try and get this straight...

 

 

 

So this 10,000 hour rule suggests that to master a particular field of expertise, you need to practice it for 10,000 hours? Do you mean that you need to practice for at least 10,000 hours or that all of a sudden you become a pro when you've racked up that magical figure? I know which one sounds plausible, and it's certainly not the latter.

 

 

 

As people have said, we all learn at different rates, so the notion that all of a sudden you're a pro at something when you notch up 10,000 hours of practice is almost certainly not true. If you're suggesting that there was research proving this, provide the research so we can check it out for ourselves and pick out potential flaws. If you can't provide the research, then I'll remain skeptical

 

 

 

Even if we assume the research is true, the point isn't that after 10,000 hours you suddenly master something - as you said learning is a gradual process and different for everyone. There was also some info in an article I read about this that those who've done 10,000 hours of something are those considered phenomenal at it, 8,000 is enough to be far better than average and 6,000 or so to teach it. Can't find the article atm, it's hidden somewhere under a massive pile of newspaper cuttings in my room, might dig it up later. Found this on the internet though.

 

 

 

[hide=]

No one would dispute that practice is an important component of achieving exceptional levels of performance in music, chess, sports and so on. After all, even the chess prodigy Bobby Fisher spent many years immersed in chess strategy and tactics before becoming world champion. But it is commonly assumed that both talent and practice are needed to achieve renown, where talent refers to some innate predisposition to make rapid advances in a particular field.

 

 

 

Yet evidence for the contribution of talent over and above practice has proved extremely elusive. In another recent study, Ericsson and his colleagues studied young pianists and violinists in their early 20s at the Music Academy of West Berlin, Germany. They asked the music professors to nominate the best young musicians, those who they thought had the potential for careers as international soloists, as well as others whose potential they regarded as not quite so great, and a third group who were most likely to become music teachers. Hence, in terms of achievement, the first group comprises the most exceptional musicians, the second group the next most outstanding, and the last group the least exceptional.

 

 

 

If "talent" is the primary factor, we might assume that these three groups differ in their innate giftedness for music and that this explains their different levels of achievement. If a person is innately gifted, then he or she can very rapidly attain an outstanding level of performance once the basic skills and knowledge required have been mastered. Yet Ericsson and his colleagues obtained a surprising finding: the best musicians had simply practiced more across their lives than the next best ones, who in turn had practiced more than the ones likely to become music teachers. Each of the musicians was asked to estimate approximately how many hours a week they had practiced each year since the outset of their musical training, and these estimates yielded cumulative totals of about 10,000 hours for the best musicians, followed by 8,000 for the next best ones and 5,000 for the least accomplished. The musicians also kept diaries for a week, recording their exact amounts of practice, and these yielded comparable differences, suggesting that the retrospective estimates were roughly accurate.

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 3: Musical Mozarts, 1763, after Carmontelle. Leopold Mozart (1719 - 1787) playing the violin, accompanied by his seven-year-old son Wolfgang Amadeus (1756 - 1791), while his daughter Marie Anne sings. Mozart is often regarded as the quintessential child prodigy, whose achievements are attributable to natural giftedness, yet his early environment was hardly normal. His father was himself an outstanding musician and exerted great pressure on the young Wolfgang to develop his musical abilities.

 

 

 

The estimate of 10,000 hours from this study is interesting because there is now abundant evidence across a range of abilities that roughly this much practice is needed to achieve international levels of performance. For instance, it has been estimated that about this many hours of practice is usually completed between the time of first learning the rules of chess and becoming an international master. Ericsson has argued that similar amounts of practice are seen in first-rate sportspeople, writers and scientists.

 

 

 

Two other lines of evidence converge on the conclusion that innate talents play a minimal role in the development of exceptional performance. First, if giftedness is important, then it ought to be the case that children identified at an early age as having high ability in a particular domain are exactly those children who go on later to achieve high levels of accomplishment. If a child learning the violin possesses an innate musical talent, this should be fairly evident as soon as the child begins playing the instrument. In contrast, if later ability is simply dependent on amount of accumulated practice, there should be little or no relationship between early signs of ability and later achievement.

 

 

 

To test these predictions, John Sloboda, Michael Howe and their colleagues at the Unit for the Study of Musical Skill and Development at the University of Keele, England, studied a large number of children between 8 and 18, some of whom were sufficiently good musicians to have won places at a selective music school. The remainder were divided into further groups of differing musical ability, with the least musical group comprising children who had been relatively unsuccessful in learning an instrument, most giving up after less than a year.

 

 

 

Sloboda, Howe and their colleagues then interviewed the parents of these young musicians and tried to find evidence for early signs of musical talent in those who later went to music school. Despite the range of musical ability in the three groups, almost no differences between them were found. Thus the most musically gifted young people were reported to have first shown a liking for musical sounds at around 1.9 years of age, but this was no younger than in any of the other groups: for example, the children who went on to be unsuccessful in learning an instrument first showed signs of liking musical sounds at around 1.7 years of age. Similarly, there were no differences in age of first making rhythmic or dance movements to music or of first requesting involvement in musical activity. Only one characteristic, the age at which the children first sang, appeared significantly earlier in the most able group. However, even this is probably not evidence of innate musical ability, since these children experienced a greater degree of early musical input from their parents.

 

 

 

The second line of evidence suggesting that innate talents play a minimal role in the development of exceptional performance concerns the rate of improvement with practice. If talent or giftedness plays a significant role over and above practice, then we would predict that a talented individual would make more progress from a given amount of practice than a less talented one. Surely the young Garry Kasparov learned the complexities of a new chess opening in far less time than it would take an average chess player? On the other hand, if practice is essentially the only ingredient in the development of outstanding ability, then talented and less talented individuals will require the same amount of practice to progress by equal amounts.

 

 

 

The available evidence suggests that the latter of these predictions is closer to the truth. Thus in a further study of their young musicians, Sloboda, Howe and their colleagues asked them to estimate how many hours of practice per day they had engaged in each year since taking up their instrument, just as Ericsson and his colleagues had done in their study. Since the musicians were regularly taking musical grade exams, Sloboda, Howe and their colleagues were able to use this as a measure of musical progress and could therefore calculate the amount of practice that took place between successive grades. The surprising result was that the most gifted children required just as much practice as the less gifted ones: in fact, if anything, there was a tendency for them to require more. For instance, the most gifted group required on average 971 hours of cumulated practice to reach Grade 4, while a less talented group took 656 hours. The high figure in the former group is boosted by a small number of young people who practiced for exceptionally long periods of time, but even when these individuals are excluded, there is still no evidence that more gifted people can get by on less practice.

 

 

 

Overall, then, there is little evidence that talent contributes to the achievement of exceptional levels of performance over and above practice. Maybe we should dispense with the notion of talent altogether?

[/hide]

 

http://www.psychol.ucl.ac.uk/david.shan ... rtise.html

[warren211]

I guess a sport like volleyball or basketball just because I love them both, although it might ruin the fun of the game if i suddenly had the skills beyond everyone else in my school league and didn't need practice and steroid claims start arising and everyone questions where I ngot such skills from. It would be cool for about a week before people started being either jealous, angry, suspicious, or a mix of the three.

[Messydesk]

Psycology. :)

[Napalm]

No one answered, do guitarists in famous bands have more than 10k hours? Would that be enough to be good enough?

 

 

 

Well, what do you mean by "famous guitarists"? Not all famous guitarists are good, and not all good guitarists are famous. BUt I guess it completelly depends on who you are talking about. I don't think the Jonas Brothers have more than 10k hours of practice and look how famous they are. My dad, for example, has been playing guitar for over 27 years, on an average of... 2 hours and a half per day? (It's his job, not his only one). That is 22,812.5 hours of practice and he's not famous or anything.

[EarthySun]

Let me try and get this straight...

 

 

 

So this 10,000 hour rule suggests that to master a particular field of expertise, you need to practice it for 10,000 hours? Do you mean that you need to practice for at least 10,000 hours or that all of a sudden you become a pro when you've racked up that magical figure? I know which one sounds plausible, and it's certainly not the latter.

 

 

 

As people have said, we all learn at different rates, so the notion that all of a sudden you're a pro at something when you notch up 10,000 hours of practice is almost certainly not true. If you're suggesting that there was research proving this, provide the research so we can check it out for ourselves and pick out potential flaws. If you can't provide the research, then I'll remain skeptical

 

 

 

Even if we assume the research is true, the point isn't that after 10,000 hours you suddenly master something - as you said learning is a gradual process and different for everyone. There was also some info in an article I read about this that those who've done 10,000 hours of something are those considered phenomenal at it, 8,000 is enough to be far better than average and 6,000 or so to teach it. Can't find the article atm, it's hidden somewhere under a massive pile of newspaper cuttings in my room, might dig it up later. Found this on the internet though.

 

 

 

[hide=]

No one would dispute that practice is an important component of achieving exceptional levels of performance in music, chess, sports and so on. After all, even the chess prodigy Bobby Fisher spent many years immersed in chess strategy and tactics before becoming world champion. But it is commonly assumed that both talent and practice are needed to achieve renown, where talent refers to some innate predisposition to make rapid advances in a particular field.

 

 

 

Yet evidence for the contribution of talent over and above practice has proved extremely elusive. In another recent study, Ericsson and his colleagues studied young pianists and violinists in their early 20s at the Music Academy of West Berlin, Germany. They asked the music professors to nominate the best young musicians, those who they thought had the potential for careers as international soloists, as well as others whose potential they regarded as not quite so great, and a third group who were most likely to become music teachers. Hence, in terms of achievement, the first group comprises the most exceptional musicians, the second group the next most outstanding, and the last group the least exceptional.

 

 

 

If "talent" is the primary factor, we might assume that these three groups differ in their innate giftedness for music and that this explains their different levels of achievement. If a person is innately gifted, then he or she can very rapidly attain an outstanding level of performance once the basic skills and knowledge required have been mastered. Yet Ericsson and his colleagues obtained a surprising finding: the best musicians had simply practiced more across their lives than the next best ones, who in turn had practiced more than the ones likely to become music teachers. Each of the musicians was asked to estimate approximately how many hours a week they had practiced each year since the outset of their musical training, and these estimates yielded cumulative totals of about 10,000 hours for the best musicians, followed by 8,000 for the next best ones and 5,000 for the least accomplished. The musicians also kept diaries for a week, recording their exact amounts of practice, and these yielded comparable differences, suggesting that the retrospective estimates were roughly accurate.

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 3: Musical Mozarts, 1763, after Carmontelle. Leopold Mozart (1719 - 1787) playing the violin, accompanied by his seven-year-old son Wolfgang Amadeus (1756 - 1791), while his daughter Marie Anne sings. Mozart is often regarded as the quintessential child prodigy, whose achievements are attributable to natural giftedness, yet his early environment was hardly normal. His father was himself an outstanding musician and exerted great pressure on the young Wolfgang to develop his musical abilities.

 

 

 

The estimate of 10,000 hours from this study is interesting because there is now abundant evidence across a range of abilities that roughly this much practice is needed to achieve international levels of performance. For instance, it has been estimated that about this many hours of practice is usually completed between the time of first learning the rules of chess and becoming an international master. Ericsson has argued that similar amounts of practice are seen in first-rate sportspeople, writers and scientists.

 

 

 

Two other lines of evidence converge on the conclusion that innate talents play a minimal role in the development of exceptional performance. First, if giftedness is important, then it ought to be the case that children identified at an early age as having high ability in a particular domain are exactly those children who go on later to achieve high levels of accomplishment. If a child learning the violin possesses an innate musical talent, this should be fairly evident as soon as the child begins playing the instrument. In contrast, if later ability is simply dependent on amount of accumulated practice, there should be little or no relationship between early signs of ability and later achievement.

 

 

 

To test these predictions, John Sloboda, Michael Howe and their colleagues at the Unit for the Study of Musical Skill and Development at the University of Keele, England, studied a large number of children between 8 and 18, some of whom were sufficiently good musicians to have won places at a selective music school. The remainder were divided into further groups of differing musical ability, with the least musical group comprising children who had been relatively unsuccessful in learning an instrument, most giving up after less than a year.

 

 

 

Sloboda, Howe and their colleagues then interviewed the parents of these young musicians and tried to find evidence for early signs of musical talent in those who later went to music school. Despite the range of musical ability in the three groups, almost no differences between them were found. Thus the most musically gifted young people were reported to have first shown a liking for musical sounds at around 1.9 years of age, but this was no younger than in any of the other groups: for example, the children who went on to be unsuccessful in learning an instrument first showed signs of liking musical sounds at around 1.7 years of age. Similarly, there were no differences in age of first making rhythmic or dance movements to music or of first requesting involvement in musical activity. Only one characteristic, the age at which the children first sang, appeared significantly earlier in the most able group. However, even this is probably not evidence of innate musical ability, since these children experienced a greater degree of early musical input from their parents.

 

 

 

The second line of evidence suggesting that innate talents play a minimal role in the development of exceptional performance concerns the rate of improvement with practice. If talent or giftedness plays a significant role over and above practice, then we would predict that a talented individual would make more progress from a given amount of practice than a less talented one. Surely the young Garry Kasparov learned the complexities of a new chess opening in far less time than it would take an average chess player? On the other hand, if practice is essentially the only ingredient in the development of outstanding ability, then talented and less talented individuals will require the same amount of practice to progress by equal amounts.

 

 

 

The available evidence suggests that the latter of these predictions is closer to the truth. Thus in a further study of their young musicians, Sloboda, Howe and their colleagues asked them to estimate how many hours of practice per day they had engaged in each year since taking up their instrument, just as Ericsson and his colleagues had done in their study. Since the musicians were regularly taking musical grade exams, Sloboda, Howe and their colleagues were able to use this as a measure of musical progress and could therefore calculate the amount of practice that took place between successive grades. The surprising result was that the most gifted children required just as much practice as the less gifted ones: in fact, if anything, there was a tendency for them to require more. For instance, the most gifted group required on average 971 hours of cumulated practice to reach Grade 4, while a less talented group took 656 hours. The high figure in the former group is boosted by a small number of young people who practiced for exceptionally long periods of time, but even when these individuals are excluded, there is still no evidence that more gifted people can get by on less practice.

 

 

 

Overall, then, there is little evidence that talent contributes to the achievement of exceptional levels of performance over and above practice. Maybe we should dispense with the notion of talent altogether?

[/hide]

 

http://www.psychol.ucl.ac.uk/david.shan ... rtise.html

 

 

 

 

 

Thank you.

[issy2]

Let me try and get this straight...

 

 

 

So this 10,000 hour rule suggests that to master a particular field of expertise, you need to practice it for 10,000 hours? Do you mean that you need to practice for at least 10,000 hours or that all of a sudden you become a pro when you've racked up that magical figure? I know which one sounds plausible, and it's certainly not the latter.

 

 

 

As people have said, we all learn at different rates, so the notion that all of a sudden you're a pro at something when you notch up 10,000 hours of practice is almost certainly not true. If you're suggesting that there was research proving this, provide the research so we can check it out for ourselves and pick out potential flaws. If you can't provide the research, then I'll remain skeptical

 

 

 

Even if we assume the research is true, the point isn't that after 10,000 hours you suddenly master something - as you said learning is a gradual process and different for everyone. There was also some info in an article I read about this that those who've done 10,000 hours of something are those considered phenomenal at it, 8,000 is enough to be far better than average and 6,000 or so to teach it. Can't find the article atm, it's hidden somewhere under a massive pile of newspaper cuttings in my room, might dig it up later. Found this on the internet though.

 

 

 

[hide=]

No one would dispute that practice is an important component of achieving exceptional levels of performance in music, chess, sports and so on. After all, even the chess prodigy Bobby Fisher spent many years immersed in chess strategy and tactics before becoming world champion. But it is commonly assumed that both talent and practice are needed to achieve renown, where talent refers to some innate predisposition to make rapid advances in a particular field.

 

 

 

Yet evidence for the contribution of talent over and above practice has proved extremely elusive. In another recent study, Ericsson and his colleagues studied young pianists and violinists in their early 20s at the Music Academy of West Berlin, Germany. They asked the music professors to nominate the best young musicians, those who they thought had the potential for careers as international soloists, as well as others whose potential they regarded as not quite so great, and a third group who were most likely to become music teachers. Hence, in terms of achievement, the first group comprises the most exceptional musicians, the second group the next most outstanding, and the last group the least exceptional.

 

 

 

If "talent" is the primary factor, we might assume that these three groups differ in their innate giftedness for music and that this explains their different levels of achievement. If a person is innately gifted, then he or she can very rapidly attain an outstanding level of performance once the basic skills and knowledge required have been mastered. Yet Ericsson and his colleagues obtained a surprising finding: the best musicians had simply practiced more across their lives than the next best ones, who in turn had practiced more than the ones likely to become music teachers. Each of the musicians was asked to estimate approximately how many hours a week they had practiced each year since the outset of their musical training, and these estimates yielded cumulative totals of about 10,000 hours for the best musicians, followed by 8,000 for the next best ones and 5,000 for the least accomplished. The musicians also kept diaries for a week, recording their exact amounts of practice, and these yielded comparable differences, suggesting that the retrospective estimates were roughly accurate.

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 3: Musical Mozarts, 1763, after Carmontelle. Leopold Mozart (1719 - 1787) playing the violin, accompanied by his seven-year-old son Wolfgang Amadeus (1756 - 1791), while his daughter Marie Anne sings. Mozart is often regarded as the quintessential child prodigy, whose achievements are attributable to natural giftedness, yet his early environment was hardly normal. His father was himself an outstanding musician and exerted great pressure on the young Wolfgang to develop his musical abilities.

 

 

 

The estimate of 10,000 hours from this study is interesting because there is now abundant evidence across a range of abilities that roughly this much practice is needed to achieve international levels of performance. For instance, it has been estimated that about this many hours of practice is usually completed between the time of first learning the rules of chess and becoming an international master. Ericsson has argued that similar amounts of practice are seen in first-rate sportspeople, writers and scientists.

 

 

 

Two other lines of evidence converge on the conclusion that innate talents play a minimal role in the development of exceptional performance. First, if giftedness is important, then it ought to be the case that children identified at an early age as having high ability in a particular domain are exactly those children who go on later to achieve high levels of accomplishment. If a child learning the violin possesses an innate musical talent, this should be fairly evident as soon as the child begins playing the instrument. In contrast, if later ability is simply dependent on amount of accumulated practice, there should be little or no relationship between early signs of ability and later achievement.

 

 

 

To test these predictions, John Sloboda, Michael Howe and their colleagues at the Unit for the Study of Musical Skill and Development at the University of Keele, England, studied a large number of children between 8 and 18, some of whom were sufficiently good musicians to have won places at a selective music school. The remainder were divided into further groups of differing musical ability, with the least musical group comprising children who had been relatively unsuccessful in learning an instrument, most giving up after less than a year.

 

 

 

Sloboda, Howe and their colleagues then interviewed the parents of these young musicians and tried to find evidence for early signs of musical talent in those who later went to music school. Despite the range of musical ability in the three groups, almost no differences between them were found. Thus the most musically gifted young people were reported to have first shown a liking for musical sounds at around 1.9 years of age, but this was no younger than in any of the other groups: for example, the children who went on to be unsuccessful in learning an instrument first showed signs of liking musical sounds at around 1.7 years of age. Similarly, there were no differences in age of first making rhythmic or dance movements to music or of first requesting involvement in musical activity. Only one characteristic, the age at which the children first sang, appeared significantly earlier in the most able group. However, even this is probably not evidence of innate musical ability, since these children experienced a greater degree of early musical input from their parents.

 

 

 

The second line of evidence suggesting that innate talents play a minimal role in the development of exceptional performance concerns the rate of improvement with practice. If talent or giftedness plays a significant role over and above practice, then we would predict that a talented individual would make more progress from a given amount of practice than a less talented one. Surely the young Garry Kasparov learned the complexities of a new chess opening in far less time than it would take an average chess player? On the other hand, if practice is essentially the only ingredient in the development of outstanding ability, then talented and less talented individuals will require the same amount of practice to progress by equal amounts.

 

 

 

The available evidence suggests that the latter of these predictions is closer to the truth. Thus in a further study of their young musicians, Sloboda, Howe and their colleagues asked them to estimate how many hours of practice per day they had engaged in each year since taking up their instrument, just as Ericsson and his colleagues had done in their study. Since the musicians were regularly taking musical grade exams, Sloboda, Howe and their colleagues were able to use this as a measure of musical progress and could therefore calculate the amount of practice that took place between successive grades. The surprising result was that the most gifted children required just as much practice as the less gifted ones: in fact, if anything, there was a tendency for them to require more. For instance, the most gifted group required on average 971 hours of cumulated practice to reach Grade 4, while a less talented group took 656 hours. The high figure in the former group is boosted by a small number of young people who practiced for exceptionally long periods of time, but even when these individuals are excluded, there is still no evidence that more gifted people can get by on less practice.

 

 

 

Overall, then, there is little evidence that talent contributes to the achievement of exceptional levels of performance over and above practice. Maybe we should dispense with the notion of talent altogether?

[/hide]

 

http://www.psychol.ucl.ac.uk/david.shan ... rtise.html

 

 

 

 

 

Thank you. <3:

 

 

 

Pleasure :

[Jeffwilson99]

Psycology. :)

 

 

 

You mean Psychology? Well people have been studing people for a much longer time, and we don't know that much about how the human brain works, so that may not get you very far.

[walka92]

Anyone think of lovemaking? That'd be pretty awesome.

 

 

 

I'd prefer to do the 10,000 hours.

 

id rather get the 10k magically, then use it to my advantage when i get the chance and not need to see it as "practice", itll be perfect every time, if you get my point.