Deliberate practice: Is that all it takes to become an expert?
David Z. Hambrick ,
Frederick L. Oswald , Erik M. Altmann , Elizabeth J. Meinz, Fernand Gobet ,
Guillermo Campitelli . Intelligence 45 (2014) 34–45
In the previous post we've seen that practice
explains about 34% of the variance in chess performance. A significant amount, but there certainly are other factors that
explain the variance. What are
they? And what about music?
The musicians who took part in the music
studies discussed in this paper had different degrees of expertise. They stated their formal music education and estimated
the number of hours they practiced each week throughout the years.
The performance criterion was expert ratings
of the player's performance, the number of errors made by pianists while
accompanying, pianist's ability to sight read the score and other similar
measures.
As in chess, music practice explained 30% of
the variance in music performance. In one
of the chess studies, a certain chess player needed 26 years of practice to
attain master level, while another player attained master level in less than 2
years. Likewise in music: at each skill
level, some musicians needed a fifth of the mean practice time for that level,
while others needed four times the mean practice time.
If practice explains only 30-34% of the variance
in performance in chess and music – what else explains it?
An early
start –
chess players who began at an early age became more successful, regardless of
the amount of practice they had. Simonton
discovered, that the most successful and acclaimed classical composers began
studying and composing music at an earlier age than less successful classical
composers. There may be a critical
period for acquiring certain skills.
Intelligence – performance level
in music and chess is significantly correlated with IQ. Of the cognitive
abilities, working memory capacity accounts for the most significant amount of
variance in performance. The study tells
of a six year old boy who was a piano prodigy, played in concerts and almost
never practiced. His working memory
score in the Stanford Binet test was 158.
Genetics also predicts
performance level.
Personality – especially grit –
predicts high level performance in many areas.
Grit leads to an ability to invest in hours of hard practice, to
overcome difficulties etc. I guess that
other personality factors like interpersonal ability, self consciousness and
openness to experience are also relevant, as well as other factors that I haven't
mentioned.
One can argue, that since this study is based
on player's estimations of the amount of practice they had had years ago, the
data is not so reliable. But the authors
claim that retrospective reports have reasonably good correlations with diary
based reports.
Another reason for my tendency to believe
these claims is the fact that IQ
scores are correlated 0.4-0.7 with school grades. This is a kind of a "mirror image"
of the study we are discussing. 0.4-0.7
correlations are quite significant, but obviously other factors also influence
success in school. There's no doubt that
student's motivation and grit matter, and also teaching quality, school
climate, the home environment and other factors.
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