Can you teach talent?

Most people think of talent as an inborn quality that is identifiable at an early age and can be used to predict who is likely to excel. While it is true that some children acquire skills more rapidly than others, there is research in favor of the view that instruction and practice are the keys to developing talent, musically or otherwise.

Here are some examples from "This is Your Brain on Music" by Daniel J. Levitin:

In several studies, the very best conservatory students were found to have practiced the most, sometimes twice as much as those who weren't judged as good.

In another study, students were secretly divided into two groups (not revealed to the students so as not to bias them) based on teachers' evaluations of their ability, or the perception of talent. Several years later, the students who achieved the highest performance ratings were those who had practiced the most, irrespective of which "talent" group they had been assigned to previously. This suggests that practice is the cause of achievement, not merely something correlated with it. It further suggests that talent is a label that we're using in a circular fashion: When we say that someone is talented, we think we mean that they have some innate predisposition to excel, but in the end, we only apply the term retrospectively, after they have made significant achievements.

Doesn't that make you think differently about talent? The musical talent we see in people is really just a result of their dedication to learning.

So what is going on in the brain of someone learning a skill that causes them to get better?

Learning requires the assimilation and consolidation of information in neural tissue. The more experiences we have with something, the stronger the memory/learning trace for that experience becomes. Although people differ in how long it takes them to consolidate information neurally, it remains true that increased practice leads to a greater number of neural traces, which can combine to create a stronger memory representation. The strength of a memory is related to how many times the original stimulus has been experienced.

Memory strength is also a function of how much we care about the experience. Neurochemical tags associated with memories mark them for importance, and we tend to code as important things that carry with them a lot of emotion, either positive or negative.

This explains why I am no good at chess; I don't care about it and I never practice!

So if you want to do well at something, you have to really care about it. Because Let's Play Music classes are so fun and engaging, learning comes naturally. It's really a great combination! I love seeing my students really "get" new concepts, and I can tell when they have practiced during the week.

So can you teach talent! YOU BET!