Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

If you've ever seen or heard a musician play or even an actor perform, you've possibly asked yourself: "How do they do it?" or "Why can't I be that good?" My question is whether or not a person, if given an exact method of how the celebrity learned their trait, can be as good as that musician or actor with enough given practice or does that celebrity contain something in their genetic traits that allows them to educate themselves better and/or quicker? Forgive me if that was a bit hard to comprehend.

Talent is not genetic. If you practice A LOT, you can master many things. One expert said in order to become an expert, (I think it was:) 10,000 hours of practice on the one thing, with plenty of dedication. It can really seem like what you said, but it's definitely not genetic. For instance, Gabby Douglas. She practiced All the time, and she was dedicated from when she first started, for years and years, and look where she is now! In order to master something, you must have the beginner's mind. A former actor of "Cat - Woman" in the 1930's or so said, "My tombstone will be my diploma."

am I right? - SciGirl4u

It's a well-debated topic. While practice and hard work is key to performing well in just about everything (as SciGirl4U pointed out), there's also a good bit of research that shows a strong genetic connection. If you have the genetic predisposition to be a great musician (good rhythm sense, perfect pitch, etc) it may take a lot less practicing on your part to go further than someone who practices every day but has a tin ear and 10 thumbs.

The Karolinska Institute in Sweden did an oft-quoted study. They found that while hard work and practice can overcome a lack of genetically-gifted skill, it's not assured of getting you the same skill level. (http://pss.sagepub.com/content/early/20 ... 0.abstract). The study looked at twins and found that one twin who practiced hard and one who did not could often perform a task at similar skill levels. Another study I located pretty quickly was The Heritability of Aptitude and Exceptional Talent Across Different Domains in Adolescents and Young Adults (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2688647/) which suggests a similar result - that people can't necessarily practice their way into expertise of a task.

You'll need to research this, read a number of articles on both sides of the issue and decide for yourself. Practicing anything will always help you though, so being born into a family of painters isn't going to guarantee you a spot in New York's MoMA (Museum of Modern Art).

Howard

Thanks to HowardE, you appear to have your answer. My source was Great Courses. You can find that topic mentioned in SuperStar Student lectures, by Michael Geisen, an award winning teacher.


P.S.: I'm an 8th grader...

Thank you very much for your replies SciGirl4u and HowardE! They were very helpful!

Also, that's incredible that you're an 8th grader. I'm literally astonished by how much you know. I definitely wish I was as intelligent as you are when I was in 8th grade haha.

um....thank you? = blush

P.S.: I messed up my last account. WE ARE the same person. It's embarrassing...


(Hey! My brother, David, is 17!)

I come from a family where being able to play the guitar is not an uncommon thing. I was able to teach myself to play decently without using a mentor in maybe a week or two of maybe around a few hours a day. However, I have a friend who has been trying to learn to play the guitar for a little over two months and still can't play as well as I can. When I asked him, he told me that no one in his family was able to play the guitar nor has ever tried to. So it led me to the question of whether or not family influence has anything to do with how well you develop a skill.

The question of how much heredity influences our abilities and talents has been debated forever and no one has been able to prove that there is a gene for genius or musical ability or athletic prowess. This does not prove that genetic factors are not important, only that it is very hard to determine whether our talents are inherited or acquired through childhood training and experience.

Maybe you have genes that make your brain better able to distinguish and remember notes and melodies than other people, or maybe you were exposed to more music when you were a baby and developed a better ear. It is very hard to prove since the genetics of human behavior is virtually unknown.

If you look at family trees of famous musicians, the Bachs certainly stand out as a very musical family, but maybe that is just because of their childhood training and exposure to a musical world where they lived.

Einstein's father was a practical engineer but not a genius. Neither was Einstein's sister or any of his three children.

Are you thinking of doing some project to look for the genes of talent? Let us know and we will try to help.

Sybee

Yes, I am planning to conduct a human behavioral experiment to determine whether or not genetics have anything to do with how well an individual is able to learn to play an instrument. It led me to the question of whether or not family influence had anything to do with it as well. I understand that I will need to research some more about famous musicians and more than likely will have to dig up some history about their exposure to music, but other than that I'm stuck. I'm not exactly sure how to go about conducting my experiment.

Hi Joshua,

I wish I could tell you a good way to set up this project but I really don't know. Maybe one of the other experts can come up with a good suggestion.

You could do your own family tree and try to identify all the musicians in your genealogy if you can trace it back far enough. I have used ancestry.com and that works well for people in this country. There's also a genealogy search website for the UK, but I don't know about other countries.

If you know some other people who are musicians you could ask them if they know how many musical ancestors they had. You would probably have to look at a lot of people in order to get a statistically meaningful result. Do some online research and find out what has been written on the inheritance of musical or other abilities and also do a search for a 'music' gene. I don't know if there is such a thing, but it is worth a look. If you could find a DNA sequence that is associated with musical talent then you could do a search in your own DNA to see if you have it. Maybe you are a distant relative of J. S. Bach!

Good luck!

Sybee

Hello. It sounds like you have two threads going for the same project. Please post all questions to a single thread so the experts can respond appropriately based on what has already been discussed. Good luck, and thanks for using Science Buddies!

I want to do a project that will open people eyes but I can't think of something my teacher would allow. My project has to be an experiment. I want to do something about how microwaves affects human beings but it keeps being rejected.