Q: But that software doesn’t improve performance in other areas. For instance, in 2005 you played an ancient form of tennis with a harder ball and different techniques against Roger Federer, and he could barely hit the ball. Why was his reaction time so slow?
A: When we see elite athletes returning a smash, we assume they have instincts or reactions that they were born with that are faster than ours. The evidence shows that is not the case. What experts in tennis or chess or any other field have is an ability to perceive patterns in their particular area of endeavour, which enables them to anticipate far better than other people—but it doesn’t transfer to another field, because it’s not a general talent but a specific skill built up through years and years of practice. Psychologists call it “chunking.” Think of reading: if a word flashes on a screen you don’t have to look at every letter—you just recognize the sequence, the pattern. And the more you read, the easier it becomes to chunk words. But if someone flashes a random assortment of consonants, you can’t chunk them because the pattern isn’t recognizable. Athletes build up years of experience with the “language,” as it were, of their particular sport. For example, in table tennis, when I see somebody shaping up to play a forehand smash, because of my long-term experience watching people smash, I’m able to infer from the movement pattern of my opponent where the ball is going to go, so I’m already in position to play my return. But that ability to chunk is very specific to table tennis. The patterns are totally different in tennis, in golf, in chess.
Q: How is chunking different from memory?
A: If you disrupt the “language” or familiar patterns of a game, the ability to chunk disappears. Scientists have shown that if you set up a chess board in a real-game situation and throw a chess expert in for five seconds, he’ll be able to remember the placement of every single piece on the board. The pattern is familiar. But if you set up the pieces randomly, in a way they would never be placed in an actual game, he can’t remember the position of the pieces better than you or I. His memory is not better, but his pattern recognition is better. To circumvent the constraints of short-term memory, chunking is absolutely vital in many areas of life. Experienced firefighters, for instance, can look at a fire and understand its dynamics almost instantaneously by the process of chunking. Over time, they build up extraordinary pattern recognition, and part of that is because they have to concentrate so hard and be fully engaged, or people will die.
Q: You say that there’s no such thing as a child prodigy, there are just parents who coach their children to start practising earlier and harder. Why do some parents succeed while others fail?
A: If there’s some level of coercion, if a child is doing the work or the sport because he feels he’ll be disciplined by his parents if he doesn’t, the amount he’ll improve is severely compromised and there’s a greater risk of burning out. Good coaching is about encouraging enjoyment and getting the young person to internalize the motivation. Tiger Woods said, “My dad never asked me to play golf. I asked him.”
Q: You write about Laszlo Polgar, a Hungarian educational psychologist who set out in the 1970s to prove that any child could become world-class at something. He chose chess because success could be measured objectively, and his three daughters became the best female players in history. How did he get them to internalize motivation?
A: Polgar made chess playful, jovial, and he used little tactics to build a level of excitement and interest. For instance, at the beginning he would say, “No, no, you’re not allowed to play yet.” By the time they were teenagers and winning international tournaments, the girls were fascinated by chess and wanted to practise. They didn’t need to be pushed.
Q: How important is positive feedback?
A: The type of positive feedback is crucial. If you praise kids for talent, for how skilled they are, they avoid challenges because they know that if they fail they’re going to lose that label. You want to encourage and praise them for effort, for working hard. The distinction is between what Carol Dweck, a Stanford psychologist who has done groundbreaking work in this area, calls a fixed mindset and a growth mindset. If you have a fixed mindset, you believe that talent is what leads to success, and you are likely to give up if you fail early on because that will be regarded as evidence that you lack the necessary talent. But if you believe that success revolves around hard work and practice, failure is not going to deter you at all. It’s going to tell you that you need to practise harder. With a growth mindset, you’re more likely to reach excellence, because failure is an inevitable part of reaching excellence.
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