Exceptional performers drive innovation and help solve humanity's most pressing problems. Societies have a vital interest in the development of top performers in various fields. A recent review in the journal Science suggests that gifted education and talent programs have been based on false premises. For the first time, an international, interdisciplinary research team has collated the development of world-class performers in science, classical music, chess, and sports.
Traditional research into giftedness and expertise assumes that the key factors to develop outstanding achievements are early performance (e.g., in a school subject, sport, or in concerts) and corresponding abilities (e.g., intelligence, motor skills, musicality) along with many years of intensive training in a discipline. Accordingly, talent programs typically aim to select the top-performing youth and then seek to further accelerate their performance through intensive discipline-specific training. However, this is apparently not the ideal way to promote young talent, as a team led by Arne Güllich, professor of sports science at RPTU University Kaiserslautern-Landau has recently discovered.
The starting point: Until recently, research into giftedness and expertise has focused on young and sub-elite performers. For example, school and college students, young athletes and chess players, or musicians at conservatories. The conclusions drawn from this research have recently been called into question by evidence from adult world-class athletes. "Traditional research into giftedness and expertise did not sufficiently consider the question of how world-class performers at peak performance age developed in their early years," Arne Güllich summarizes. His research intention in the current Review was, therefore, to investigate the development of these top performers. To this end, an international, interdisciplinary research team has been assembled, including Arne Güllich, Michael Barth, assistant professor of sports economics at the University of Innsbruck, D. Zach Hambrick, professor of psychology at Michigan State University, and Brooke N. Macnamara, professor of psychology at Purdue University. The results are now published in Science.
Pooling the findings from various disciplines
The research team reanalyzed extensive data from many original studies. They examined the development of a total of 34,839 international top performers. These include Nobel Prize winners in the sciences, Olympic medalists, the world's best chess players, and the most renowned classical music composers. In this way, for the first time, the development of world-class performers across various disciplines was synthesized.
The best youths and later world-class performers are different people
A key finding: top performers undergo a different development pattern than previous research assumed. "And a common pattern emerges across the different disciplines," Arne Güllich emphasizes. He identifies three key findings. The first is that the best at a young age and the best later in life are mostly different individuals. Second, those who reached the world-class level showed rather gradual performance development in their early years and were not yet among the best of their age group. And the third finding is that those who later achieved peak performance did not specialize in a single discipline at an early age, but engaged in various disciplines (e.g., different subjects of study, genres of music, sports, or professions).
Smarter learners with reduced risks
How can these findings, which deviate from the prevailing opinion, be explained? "We propose three explanatory hypotheses for discussion," says Güllich. The search-and-match hypothesis suggests that experiences with different disciplines improve one's chances of finding an optimal discipline for oneself over the years. The enhanced-learning-capital hypothesis implies that varied learning experiences in different disciplines enhance one's learning capital, which improves the performer's subsequent ongoing learning at the highest level in a discipline. And the limited-risks hypothesis suggests that multidisciplinary engagement mitigates risks of career-hampering factors, such as misbalanced work-rest ratios, burnout, being stuck in a discipline one ceases to enjoy, or injuries in psychomotor disciplines (sports, music). Arne Güllich: "Those who find an optimal discipline for themselves, develop enhanced potential for long-term learning, and have reduced risks of career-hampering factors, have improved chances of developing world-class performance."
Foster the pursuit of various disciplines
Considering the latest findings, what can Arne Güllich recommend today? How should society promote young talented people to develop into future top performers? "Here's what the evidence suggests: Don't specialize in just one discipline too early. Encourage young people and provide them opportunities to pursue different areas of interest. And promote them in two or three disciplines." These may be disciplines that are not directly related to on another: language and mathematics, for example, or geography and philosophy. Or just think of Albert Einstein and his violin—one of the most important physicists, who was also passionate about music from an early age.
In light of these new findings, policymakers and program managers can promote change toward evidence-based policies and practices. Arne Güllich concludes: "This may enhance opportunities for the development of world-class performers—in science, sports, music, and other fields."
