Category: Science

Want to eat that marshmallow right now? You can, but here’s the catch: if you wait a few minutes, you can have two marshmallows.

(Argh!)

Turns out that kids who can wait — who can control their impulses — grow up to get better grades, and score 210 points higher on the S.A.T., on average. The marshmallow study, originally performed by Dr. Walter Mischel, is one of many showing that self control–the ability to ignore tempting distractions and keep one’s emotions in check–stands at the root of achievements of all kinds.

So is self-control innate? Or can it be taught, developed, and practiced? For the latest answer, check out Paul Tough’s fascinating story about Tools of the Mind, a promising new program that teaches self-control through — surprise! — play. Turns out that dramatic play helps kids develop and improve their ability to keep impulses in check. As Angela Duckworth puts it, “Just because something is effortful and difficult and involves some amount of constraint doesn’t mean it can’t be fun.”

As much fun as eating two marshmallows, you might say.

PS — Thought-provoking discussion on this from Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman over at the excellent NurtureShock.

It’s not often that we get to witness the first swings of someone who goes on to be the best tennis player in the world. Today’s our lucky day: here is Dinara Safina, current world number one player, taking her first swings at Spartak. We all know how great she became. The question is, did she have some special gift that separated her from other kids her age?

• Does she an unusual level of natural coordination? (Uh, no–check out the pratfall at the 17-second mark.)
• Does she exhibit unusually sharp hand-eye ability (Not really.)
• Does she have a naturally efficient swing? (Not unless underhand is efficient.)

Yet I think we can see the real gift here: She’s falling in love with this game. Her coach (her mother) has wisely cut down her racquet and given her a soft, bouncy ball to play with. Dinara is having a complete blast out there. When she misses, she chases it down and does it again. This is how it begins.

Just back from a speaking engagement in Amsterdam — what a marvelous city, in every sense of the word. I marveled mostly at the spectacle of thousands of people on bikes whizzing around the streets. And I mean whizzing. Amsterdammers ride really fast, even the oldest men, even the mothers with three kids in the rickshaw-like bikes, no helmets. Add in streetcars, motorcycles, canals, and blissed-out tourists for obstacles, and you’ve got what amounts to a high-speed ballet.

Speaking of ballet: at the conference I was attending, I got the opportunity to drive a Segway for the first time. I hopped on (how hard could this be?) and promptly drove it straight toward a murky canal. I couldn’t figure out how to turn the darn thing, and the canal kept looming closer and closer. Fortunately, several quick-thinking Dutch people (employing bike-honed danger-reflexes, no doubt), headed me off, preventing any impromptu swims. Ah, talent!

If business is sport (and I think it is), few companies are as good at cultivating talent as quiet, non-flashy United Parcel Service. This article gives a glimpse at the machinery behind UPS’s success.

In a nutshell: a few years ago, the company’s younger drivers were failing, so the company invented a new training program: a kind of mini-town where trainees can deeply practice their every move. It’s elaborate (force sensors on handrails, obstacle courses, a “falling machine” where harnessed-up trainees attempt, and fail, to carry packages over slippery floors), and it works brilliantly. UPS is doing exactly what the coaches at Meadowmount, The Shyness Clinic, Spartak or any of the other talent hotbeds are doing: using deep practice to build fast, fluent circuitry.

As a longtime scribbler whose handwriting is nearly indecipherable, this story by Slate’s Emily Yoffe hits close to home. In it, Yoffe tries to improve the handwriting skills of herself and her eighth-grade daughter.

In the end, both Yoffe and her daughter are “astonished” at their progress. This raises an interesting point: the reliability of this kind of astonishment. High-quality, targeted training always ends up producing astonishing progress. Which is to say, it feels astonishing, like some kind of magic, but when you understand how the system actually works–how it’s possible to build fast, beautiful circuitry through deep practice–these gains are wonderfully predictable.

Danyl Johnson is apparently the Next Big Thing — a humble, unknown teacher from Reading, England, who came out of nowhere to star on the British talent show “The X Factor.” You can see it all in his first audition: the technique, the joy, the quicksilver shifts in mood and expression with which he works the crowd, telling a story with his body and voice. He hits the mark: the performance is remarkable and inspiring by any measure (and unlike Joe Cocker’s version, doesn’t require subtitles).

Consider too that Danyl is, at 27, a former member of not one but three bands (one of which, Street Level, was a boy band a la the Backstreet Boys). He attended Starmaker stage school, where he now teaches, and has a background chock full of ignition (broken family; a baby sister who passed away). So are his skill circuits amazing? Absolutely. Did they come from nowhere? Absolutely not, whatever Simon Cowell might say.

Talk about a talent hotbed: Curacao is back in the Little League World Series in Williamsport, PA, this week, having won the tough Caribbean Region for the ninth consecutive year. For reasons why, check out this trailer for this upcoming documentary film, “Boys of Summer”–and note the slow, deep practice happening around the 45-second mark. (BTW, here’s the film’s facebook page.)   So far so good: Curacao beat powerhouse Venezuela in their opener yesterday, 2-1.

I’ve always enjoyed Ben Kingsley’s work; I will enjoy it even more after hearing him talk about his craft on Charlie Rose, comparing the skill of acting to the skill of being a general in the military. As Kingsley explains, “there’s a discipline, a training, a code of practice that’s invisible to the public eye… we have to make decisions between ‘action’ and ‘cut’ in microseconds.”  In other words, it’s a high-speed neural circuit, built and maintained through deep practice. (Though those other words would sound a lot cooler in Kingsley’s accent.)

I was listening to my latest obsession, RadioLab NYC, and came across a great story about perfect pitch — that rare ability to precisely identify any musical note possessed by Mozart, Hendrix, Ray Charles, etc — and which is, quite obviously, a genetic gift. Right?

Uh, no. A rather amazing study by Diana Deutsch tells a new story. Kids who grow up speaking a tonal language (languages like Mandarin where meaning is connected to subtle but precise shifts in pitch) are nine times more likely to develop perfect pitch — and this holds true regardless of genetic heritage. In other words, perfect pitch is not about genes. It’s about firing the circuit.

As Deutsch puts it, “Perfect pitch for years seemed like a beautiful gift – given only to a few genetically endowed people. But our research suggests that it might be available to virtually everybody.”

A fascinating piece by Alison Gopnik (who happens to be the sister of Adam Gopnik, one of my favorite writers — talk about talent hotbeds!) about how smart babies really are. The short answer: a lot smarter than we think. And the kind of learning they are built to do is all about exploring–not about achieving specific goals. The takeaway for parents: chuck the flashcards and dvds (which are narrow, reactive, goal-oriented) and let the kiddo play with the wooden bowls; let those circuits fire. As Gopnik writes:

There are no perfect toys; there is no magic formula. Parents and other caregivers teach young children by paying attention and interacting with them naturally and, most of all, by just allowing them to play.

(The Gopnik family must’ve had a lot of wooden bowls.)