The Genius in All of Us: New Insights Into Genetics, Talent, and IQ (37 page)

    
Whereas the amateur singers experienced the lesson as self-actualization and an enjoyable release of tension, the professional singers increased their concentration and focused on improving their performance during the lesson
:
Ericsson, K. Anders, Roy W. Roring, and Kiruthiga Nandagopal. “Giftedness and evidence for reproducibly superior performance: an account based on the expert performance framework.”
High Ability Studies
18, no. 1 (June 2007): 3–56.

The same phenomenon is discussed in the following works:

Charness, Neil, R. Th. Krampe, and U. Mayr. “The Role of Practice and Coaching in Entrepreneurial Skill Domains: An International Comparison of Life-Span Chess Skill Acquisition.” In
The Road to Excellence: The Acquisition of Expert Performance in the Arts and Sciences, Sports, and Games
, edited by K. A. Ericsson. Lawrence Erlbaum, 1996, pp.51–80.

Charness, Neil, M. Tuffiash, R. Krampe, E. Reingold, and E. Vasyukova. “The role of deliberate practice in chess expertise.”
Applied Cognitive Psychology
19 (2005): 151–65.

Duffy, L. J., B. Baluch, and K. A. Ericsson. “Dart performance as a function of facets of practice amongst professional and amateur men and women players.”
International Journal of Sports Psychology
35 (2004): 232–45.

Ward, P., N. J. Hodges, A. M. Williams, and J. L. Starkes. “Deliberate Practice and Expert Performance: Defining the Path to Excellence.” In
Skill Acquisition in Sport: Research, Theory and Practice
, edited by A. M. Williams and N. J. Hodges. Routledge, 2004.

    
Genes are involved, of course
.
They’re a dynamic part of the process as they become activated.

Ericsson writes:

The adult body has evolved to cope with short-term fluctuations in physiological demands … Whenever individuals engage in physical sport activities,
the metabolism of their muscle fibers increases, and the supply of oxygen and energy within the muscle cells is rapidly reduced and supplies are extracted from the nearest blood vessels. To preserve homeostasis, the body activates various counter measures (negative feedback loops). For example, increased breathing rates increase oxygen concentrations and decrease carbon dioxide concentrations in the blood. In turn, the conversion of stored energy replenishes expendable energy available in the blood, and the increased rate of blood circulation distributes these commodities to the systems of the body with the greatest needs. However, when individuals deliberately push themselves beyond the zone of relative comfort (Ericsson, 2001, 2002) and engage in sustained strenuous physical activity, they will challenge the available protection of homeostasis sufficiently to induce an abnormal state for cells in some physiological systems. These states will sometimes be associated with abnormally low levels of certain vital elements and compounds, such as oxygen, and energy-related compounds (e.g., glucose, adenosine-diphosphate; ADP and adenosine-triphosphate; ATP), which lead metabolic processes to change and produce alternative biochemical products. These biochemical states will trigger the activation of some genes in massive storage of dormant genes within the cells’ DNA. The activated genes in turn will stimulate and “turn on” biochemical systems designed to cause bodily reorganization and adaptive change. Recent research shows that the biochemical response of cells to various types of strain induced by vigorous activity, such as physical exercise, is very complex. Even more directly relevant to physical exercise, over one hundred different genes are activated and expressed in mammalian muscle in response to intense physical exercise. (Ericsson, “Giftedness and evidence for reproducibly superior performance,”. pp. 3–56.)

    
“When individuals deliberately push themselves
”:
Ericsson, “Giftedness and evidence for reproducibly superior performance,” pp. 3–56.

    
This does not mean, of course, that every person has the same resources and opportunity, or that anyone can be great at anything; biological and circumstantial differences and advantages/disadvantages abound. But in revealing talent to be a process, the simple idea of genetic giftedness is forever debunked. It is no longer reasonable to attribute talent or success to a specific gene or any other mysterious gift
.

Ericsson writes:

A careful review of the published evidence on the heritability of acquisition of elite sports achievement failed to reveal reproducible evidence for any genetic constraints for attaining elite levels by healthy individuals (excluding, of course, the evidence on body size). (Ericsson, “Deliberate practice and the modifiability of body and mind,” pp. 4–34.)

R. Subotnik adds:

In order to be gifted, that is, to be exceptional, as one matures, one needs to be increasingly active in one’s own development. You have to develop your hunger, you have to be open to career advice, and you have to hone your social skills or your intriguing persona. (Subotnik, “A developmental view of giftedness,” pp. 14–15.)

    
From sublime pianists to unusually profound physicists, researchers have been very hard-pressed to find any examples of truly extraordinary performers in any field who reached the top of their game before that ten-thousand-hour mark
.

Daniel Levitin writes:

In study after study, of composers, basketball players, fiction writers, ice-skaters, concert pianists, chess players, master criminals … this number comes up again and again. Ten thousand hours is equivalent to roughly three hours a day, or 20 hours a week, of practice over 10 years … No one has yet found a case in which true world-class expertise was accomplished in less time. It seems that it takes the brain this long to assimilate all that it needs to know to achieve true mastery. (Levitin,
This Is Your Brain on Music
, p. 193.)

Recent chess studies conform with Levitin’s and Ericsson’s observations in a number of ways—practice hours, starting age, etc. (Campitelli and Gobet, “The role of practice in chess”; Gobet and Campitelli, “The role of domain-specific practice, handedness and starting age in chess,” pp. 159–72.)

    
“People make a great mistake who think that my art has come easily to me,” Mozart himself once wrote to his father, as if to make this precise point
.
“Nobody has devoted so much time and thought to compositions as I.”

He continues: “There is not a famous master whose music I have not studied over and over.” (Pott, “The Triumph of Genius.”)

    
His first seven piano concertos, written from ages eleven to sixteen, “contain almost nothing original,” reports Temple University’s Robert Weisberg, and “perhaps should not even be labeled as being by Mozart
.
”

   And they may not even have been that impressive—they exist today only in his father’s handwriting.

Robert W. Weisberg writes:

Mozart seems to have begun learning his skill through study and small-scale modification of the works of others. Mozart arranged it for piano and other instruments … Even when Mozart began to write music of his own, those pieces seem to have been based relatively closely on works by other composers, as can be seen in his production of symphonies. (Weisberg, “Case Studies of Innovation,”. p. 214)

Jon Pott adds: “Many of his early compositions were dazzling and accomplished for his age, but not for more.” Pott also writes that critics consider his Symphony no. 29, written ten years after his first symphony, to be his first work of real stature. (Pott, “The Triumph of Genius.” See also Weisberg, “Expertise in Creative Thinking,” pp. 761–87.)

CHAPTER 4:
THE SIMILARITIES AND DISSIMILARITIES OF TWINS

PRIMARY SOURCES

Bateson, Patrick. “Behavioral Development and Darwinian Evolution.” In
Cycles of Contingency: Developmental Systems and Evolution
, edited by Susan Oyama et al. MIT Press, 2003.

Bateson, Patrick, and Paul Martin.
Design for a Life: How Biology and Psychology Shape Human Behavior
. Simon & Schuster, 2001.

Downes, Stephen M. “Heredity and Heritability.” Published online on the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Web site, first posted July 15, 2004; revised May 28, 2009.

Joseph, Jay.
The Gene Illusion: Genetic Research in Psychiatry and Psychology under the Microscope
. Algora Publishing, 2004.

Moore, David S.
The Dependent Gene: The Fallacy of “Nature vs. Nurture.”
Henry Holt, 2003.

Ridley, Matt.
Nature via Nurture
. HarperCollins, 2003.

Turkheimer, Eric, Andreana Haley, Mary Waldron, Brian D’Onofrio, and Irving I. Gottesman. “Socioeconomic status modifies heritability of IQ in young children.”
Psychological Science
14, no. 6 (November 2003): 623–28.

CHAPTER NOTES

    
Ted Williams retired from baseball on September 28, 1960, at age forty-two
.

Standing before a grateful hometown crowd at Fenway Park and facing Baltimore’s Jack Fisher on the mound. (Full game stats available online at
baseball-reference.com
.)

    
“What if we could sell dad’s DNA and there could be little Ted Williamses all over the world?
”:
Farrey, “Awaiting Another Chip off Ted Williams’ Old DNA?”

    
Rainbow the cat and her clone Cc
.

Kristen Hays writes:

Rainbow the cat is a typical calico with splotches of brown, tan and gold on white. Cc, her clone, has a striped gray coat over white. Rainbow is reserved. Cc is curious and playful. Rainbow is chunky. Cc is sleek … Sure, you can clone your favorite cat. But the copy will not necessarily act or even look like the original. (Hays, “A Year Later, Cloned Cat Is No Copycat: Cc Illustrates the Complexities of Pet Cloning.”)

    
“Identical genes don’t produce identical people
”:
Wray, Sheler, and Watson, “The World After Cloning,” pp. 59–63.

    
“In theory, you could create someone who would be a step ahead of other people
”:
Farrey, “Awaiting Another Chip off Ted Williams’ Old DNA?”

    
Coincidentally, they’d been given the same first name by their adoptive parents
.

   In fact, they had the same first name and virtually the same middle name: James Alan Lewis and James Allen Springer. These were names given separately by adopted parents, which could only reflect culture or coincidence, not genetics—but it does play to the eerie magical quality of the story.

    
“I thought we were going to do a single case study,” Bouchard later recalled
:
Wright,
Twins
, p.46.

    
“Nothing seems to me more curious,” he once wrote, “than the similarity and dissimilarity of twins
”:
Charles Darwin, in a letter to Francis Galton, November 7, 1875, as published on the
Galton.org
Web site.

    
Since identical twins were thought to share 100 percent of their DNA
.

   In fact, identical twins turn out not to have exactly the same DNA. Very close, but not exactly the same. (Anahad O’Connor, “The Claim: Identical Twins Have Identical DNA,”
New York Times
, March 11, 2008.)