Why Child Prodigies Rarely Become Great Adults

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1:00Exploring both interstellar and interpersonal space-time continuums, the last show with David Cooper. We love the story of a child prodigy, a tiny genius with great ability and a big destiny. But what if that early grinding and being great doesn't build greatness in adulthood? And young people who are great at their craft don't often become the elite performers as much as you think? That seems to be the case, based on research from sports science professor from Kaiser Slottern University of Technology in Germany, Arna Goulish, Arna, welcome to the program. Hello David, thank you for having me. So every parent that has a top athlete or top piano player or great child that is a prodigy, do they seem to think that their kid is destined to become top tier elite performers? Yeah, many believe so. The reason is that traditional research did suggest so, right?

2:01So 50 or, yeah, decades of expertise and giftedness and talent research. And they suggested that the two critical factors are early performance and abilities and intensive specialized training in your discipline, right? But they were mistaken. As we know today, so the point was that traditional research typically focused on young people, like secondary students or college students or conservatory students and so on, right? And so what we believe we were able to contribute was we really examined the best performers of the world in adulthood, so at peak performance age. And we find that the factors are totally different. So what are some of the actual factors that can lead to someone being a top performer in their field? If not being great as a young kid, I'm sure there are people who are great when they were young. I think Mozart is the classic example.

3:02There are many such in athletics as well. But what are some of the factors that create some of these great people that we see out there? Yeah. And Darwin is a counter-example, right? Or a bit orphan who were not prodigies, although they tried to, or their parents wanted them to. So two points I would like to make. The first is, most early exceptional performers, like youth age, do not become adult exceptional performers. And most adult exceptional performers were not early exceptional performers. There are two discreet populations, they're just not the same individuals, right? The good news about this is, for youth, for their parents and family and so on, that's even if you're not an exceptional performer, be it in a school subject or in playing the violin or in basketball and so on, you may still have a potential for becoming an exceptional

4:02adult performer in the long term, right? And the second point we find is that the factors that distinguish the adult world-class performers from those performing just below is that the world-class performers in their early years had a rather gradual performance development. They were not among the best, most of them were not among the best of their age. And they engaged in various disciplines across various years. So an average, to give you an example of world-class athletes, so Olympic medalists, for example, they typically did three different sports. So it was not as many as possible either, right? It was their main sport plus two other sports. And they did those other sports for nine years and of those nine years, they competed in those other sports for seven years. So it was serious engagement. It was not just sampling and trying out a bit and so on, right?

5:03So it was serious performance-related experience, yeah. So that seems to be the two critical factors that distinguish the world-class performers from those just below. And we found the same pattern in world-class athletes, in noble laureates and the sciences, world-class chess players, the most renowned classical music composers of the world. So it seems to be quite universal. Well, it's good news for people who want to be great at their craft, but feel like they started too late because they started playing piano at age 22 instead of at age 4. But it's maybe also bad news for parents who have super high hopes for their kids and their kids show a lot of promise at a young age. Your research, does it kind of like challenge ideas of where these great people we see out there come from? Yeah, sure. It differs from previous research. So this evidence is really, is very recent.

6:08And especially the news that it's so similar across so different disciplines. So povote, plain basketball, and classical music, for example. They have very little in common, but it seems like when it's about people approximating the margin of human capability. The end is pattern of rather gradual early performance development, but engaging in several disciplines seems to be beneficial. And of course, staying on like practicing your craft many, many, many hours, really staying engaged, does burnout play a role? I can imagine a kid at age 12 whose parents are pushing them into gymnastics every day, seven days a week training, hours every day after school. And the kid like gets burnt out in their teens and kind of gives up or loses interest. Is that play a role? Absolutely. Yeah, that happens. And it happens quite often. And it is more likely to happen if you specialize in just one discipline and intensify

7:11discipline, specific training, right? So burnout, injuries are more likely to incur overuse injuries. And it may also happen that you just cease to enjoy a discipline and you don't have another one to change to, right? So these are the risks that are reduced or are buffered if you do various disciplines. In addition, you become a smarter learner. If you have all those learning experiences, but it's authentic experiences, right? Performance-related multi-year in various disciplines that makes you a smarter learner for later years at a very high level in one specialized discipline. In my own experience, I only came to like long form interviewing in my late 20s, early 30s. I did that. I did stand-up comedy. I don't do stand-up comedy anymore. But the skills that I learned about performing being on stage had a constructed narrative. These kinds of things, they serve me well. And you see now your world class?

8:12Of course. Well, I exist in the world and I went to class in school. So that is no. For a parent listening who has like a nine-year-old hockey prodigy or, you know, what's advice you would give to them if they do want their child to be successful and do want to be in that small percentage of child prodigies that actually grow up to be great. Right. So first, if they do achieve high performance at a young age, we won't limit them. So I mean, I don't know if you have children. I have a cat though, but he's not going to be a great cat performer. When they had fantastic marks in school, I wouldn't tell them to try to be worse in school. Right? So high performance at a young age is not a problem per se, but the way we get there is a problem. As you mentioned, early specialization, early intensification and so on. So as a parent, it is beneficial if we encourage the young people and provide them opportunities to do at least one other discipline.

9:15If they like to, we won't force them to do so either. They should be ideally intrinsically motivated, but most children want to do different things. If they don't, it's mostly by adult influence, right? The most children want to do several disciplines, several sports, several instruments and music and so on. So we encourage them to do so and to continue to do so. And I think an important point is there is no use just telling an eight year old Kevin or Marvin, why don't you try ice hockey? Because he doesn't know where ice hockey takes place. What the schedule is, how I get there, which bus line I have to take and so on, right? So I take Kevin by the hand and say, look, this is David. David does ice hockey. Why don't you get to know David and try out ice hockey? Is there an importance of finding the right fit? Like what sport, what craft, what medium, what activity? Like, is there an importance to that to be in great in order to stay motivated and connected

10:18to it? Absolutely. So that's one of the great advantages of you. You do two or three disciplines and you have authentic experiences in those disciplines that multiplies your chance of finding a discipline that optimally suits you. Well, Anna Goulish is a sports science professor at Kaiser Slodern University of Technology in Germany. Anna, I've enjoyed the chat. Thanks for being on the show. Thank you, too. Monster Energy, everybody knows white monster, zero ultra. That's the OG. It kicked off this whole zero sugar energy drink thing, but ultra is a whole lineup now. You've got strawberry dreams, blue Hawaiian, sunrise, and vice guava, and they all bring the monster energy punch. So if you've been living in the white can, branch out. Ultra's got a flavor for every vibe, and every single one is zero sugar. Tap the banner to learn more.