What makes one person good with math, and another with words? Is it brain chemistry? By the same extension, what makes one person good at, say, baseball, and another good at football? Is it just a matter of which activity the person gets into first? I’m sure there have been people who have been a virtual prodigy at more than one activity, however. How is that unusual amount of ability explained?
I heard a so called expert last year explain how Barry Bonds could be so successful at hitting a baseball. It boiled down to his natural physical ability; being able to see a 90 mph fastball, lightening fast reflexes, and incredible upper body strength; combined with lots of practice and a serious interest in the game (his father was a major league player). His success is therefore a result of a combination of factors.
In other words, without the physical skills, he couldn’t do it nor without the innate desire to work hard, he couldn’t do it. He happens to have the right combination of genes and environment. Apparently either one alone wouldn’t have been enough.
While his combination of skills might add up to being a great ball player, someone else with a completely different set of traits might end up being a great pianist. I think it depends upon your natural talents or skills, combined with your interest or desires.
I think you have to really enjoy your chosen activity before there is any chance of developing talent.
So someone who tries baseball for while and doesn’t really get into it, and then tries basketball and loves it will probably get talented.
I mean have you ever heard of anyone who was an ace at something they hated?
I think it is more complex than just one or two factors. I would say it is a combination of how a person thinks(and that makes us wonder about nature vs nurture), physical characteristics, and how it fits into your social setting. If you have friends that have strong disdain for, say math, It may effect how you percieve it, and negatively effect a persons potential skills.
They accumulate their sheckels …
Occasionally, yes. Often because they liked it at one time, but have gotten thoroughly sick of it over the years. And keep doing it because they are nowhere near as proficient at anything else, and they like their established status.
Somebody once told me that if there was something you genuinely liked doing, DO NOT turn it into your livelihood - you will wind up despising it.
I think the question boils down to “Is there such a thing as innate talent?” Or put another way, is talent the result of nature or nurture?
The evidence in most studies that have been conducted to date indicate that it is mostly nurture, that is, “talent” is learned. Obviously, learning is easier if it is a subject you are interested in.
I am having a hard time finding specific published studies that support this, but found one good article with many footnotes here. The evidence seems to indicate that, like language, learning is easieast at very young ages, but it isn’t impossible to become a master pianist, for example, at any age. There are obvious differences with physical talents, and they may have more of an inborn element. Can anyone name someone who excelled in their field with little or no practice? If not, then “natural talent” is not a major factor, if it exists at all.
As for being a prodigy in more than one area, these are rare I suspect because of the amount of time required to practice to become a prodigy. However, I would think the skills that make one a great football player would be useful for many other sports as well. There have been quite a few athletes who excelled at multiple sports, but can you think of any who were also played 1st violin in a major orchestra or were champion chess players?
In my cognitive psyc class, we discussed the nature of expertise. Research seems to indicate that you need 10,000 hours of practice to be an expert at something. That’s why you don’t see people who are experts in more than a couple fields; it just takes too much time.