The Genius in All of Us: New Insights Into Genetics, Talent, and IQ (35 page)

In this article we propose that a general account of working memory has to include another mechanism based on skilled use of storage in long-term
memory (LTM) that we refer to as long-term working memory (LT-WM) in addition to the temporary storage of information that we refer to as short-term working memory (ST-WM). Information in LT-WM is stored in stable form, but reliable access to it may be maintained only temporarily by means of retrieval cues in ST-WM. Hence LT-WM is distinguished from ST-WM by the durability of the storage it provides and the need for sufficient retrieval cues in attention for access to information in LTM. (Ericsson and Kintsch, “Long-term working memory,” pp. 211–45.)

Ericsson adds:

Early in the twentieth century it was believed that experts were innately talented with a superior ability to store information in memory. Numerous anecdotes were collected as evidence of an unusual ability to store presented information rapidly. For example, Mozart was supposed to be able to reproduce a presented piece of music after hearing it a single time. However, more recent research has rejected the hypothesis of a generally superior memory in experts and has demonstrated that experts’ superior memory is limited to their domains of expertise and can be viewed as the result of acquired skills and knowledge relevant to each specific domain. (Ericsson, “Superior memory of experts and long-term working memory.”)

    
Though he couldn’t be sure at the time, Ericsson suspected he had just discovered the hidden key to the veiled domains of talent and genius
.

Ericsson writes:

Experts’ superior memory for representative stimuli from their domain of expertise, but not for randomly rearranged versions of those stimuli, has been frequently replicated in chess (see Charness, 1991, for a review) and also demonstrated in bridge (Charness, 1979; Engle & Bukstel, 1978); go (Reitman, 1976); medicine (G. R. Norman, Brooks & Allen, 1989); music (Sloboda, 1976); electronics (Egan & Schwartz, 1979); computer programming (McKeithen, Reitman, Rueter, & Hirtle, 1981); dance, basketball, and field hockey (Allard & Starkes, 1991); and figure skating (Deakin & Allard, 1991). (Ericsson, “Superior memory of experts and long-term working memory.”)

    
Paganini’s Sauret cadenza
:
From his first violin concerto.

    
“Talent” is defined in the
Oxford English Dictionary
as “mental endowment; natural ability” and is sourced all the way back to the parable of the talents in the book of Matthew
.

   Actually, the word “talent” goes back much further and was used first for many centuries as a measurement of a weight and then as a name for currency. Its meaning of “ability” began sometime around its use in the book of Matthew (the parable of the talents, Matthew 25:14–30).

    
The term “genius,” as it is currently defined, goes back to the tail end of the eighteenth century
.

Larry Shiner writes:

At the beginning of the eighteenth century it was widely believed that everyone had a genius or talent for something and that their particular genius could only be perfected by the guidance of reason and rule. By the end of the century, not only had the balance between genius and rule been reversed, but in addition, genius itself had become the opposite of talent and instead of everyone
having
a genius for something, a few people were said to
be
geniuses. (Shiner,
The Invention of Art
, pp. 111–12.)

    
“Poets and musicians are born,” declared the poet Christian Friedrich Schubart in 1785
:
Lowinsky, “Musical genius,” p. 325.

    
“Musical genius is that inborn, inexplicable gift of Nature,” insisted the composer Peter Lichtenthal in 1826
:
Lowinsky, “Musical genius,” p. 324.

    
“Don’t ask, young artist, ‘what is genius?’” proclaimed Jean-Jacques Rousseau in 1768
.
“Either you have it—then you feel it yourself, or you don’t—then you will never know it.”

The longer passage:

Don’t ask, young artist, “what is genius?” Either you have it—then you feel it yourself, or you don’t—then you will never know it. The genius of the musician subjects the entire Universe to his art. He paints all pictures through tones; he lends eloquence even to silence. He renders the ideas through sentiments, sentiments through accents, and the passions he expresses he awakens [also] in his listener’s heart. Pleasure, through him, takes on new charms;
pain rendered in musical sighs wrests cries [from the listener]. He burns incessantly, but never consumes himself. He expresses with warmth frost and ice. Even when he paints the horrors of Death, he carries in his soul this feeling for Life that never abandons him, and that he communicates to hearts made to feel it. But alas, he does not speak to those who don’t carry his seed within themselves and his miracles escape those who cannot imitate them. Do you wish to know whether a spark of this devouring fire animates you? Hasten then, fly to Naples, listen there to the masterworks of Leo, of Durante, of Jommelli, of Pergolesi. If your eyes fill with tears, if you feel your heart beat, if shivers run down your spine, if breath-taking raptures choke you, then take [a libretto by] Metastasio and go to work: his genius will kindle yours; you will create at his example. That is what makes the genius—and the tears of others will soon repay you for the tears that your masters elicited from you. But should the charms of this great artist leave you cold, should you experience neither delirium nor delight, should you find that which transports only ‘nice,’ do you then dare ask what is genius? Vulgar man, don’t profane this sublime word. What would it matter to you if you knew it? You would not know how to feel it. Go home and write—French music. (Lowinsky, “Musical genius,” pp. 326–27.)

    
Artists have a vested interest in our believing in the flash of revelation, the so-called inspiration
:
Lowinsky, “Musical genius,” p. 333.

    
As a vivid illustration, Nietzsche cited Beethoven’s sketchbooks
.

To see an example of one of Beethoven’s working drafts, see Sketches for the ‘Pastoral’ Symphony (no. 6 in F Major, op. 68). (Ludwig van Beethoven, 1808, British Library Add. MS 31766, f.2.)

    
Beethoven would sometimes run through as many as sixty or seventy different drafts of a phrase before settling on the final one
:
Wierzbicki, “The Beethoven Sketch-books.” (Wierzbicki cites Douglas Johnson, Alan Tyson, and Robert Winter,
The Beethoven Sketchbooks: History, Reconstruction, Inventory
, University of California Press, 1985.)

    
Over the following three decades, Ericsson and colleagues invigorated the largely dormant field of expertise studies in order to test this idea, examining high achievement from every possible angle
:
memory, cognition, practice, persistence, muscle response, mentorship, innovation, attitude, response to failure, and on and on. They studied golfers, nurses, typists, gymnasts, violinists, chess players, basketball players, and computer programmers.

   A small sampling of their published research, from earliest to most recent:

Conley, D. L., et al. “Running economy and distance running performance of highly trained athletes.”
Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise
(1980).

Salthouse, T. A. “Effects of age and skill in typing.”
Journal of Experimental Psychology: General
(1984).

Schulz, R., et al. “Peak performance and age among superathletes: track and field, swimming, baseball, tennis, and golf.”
Journal of Gerontology
(1988).

Coyle, E. F., et al. “Physiological and biomechanical factors associated with elite endurance cycling performance.”
Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise
(1991).

Abernethy, B., et al. “Visual-perceptual and cognitive differences between expert, intermediate, and novice snooker players.”
Applied Cognitive Psychology
(1994).

Starkes, J. L., et al. “A new technology and field test of advance cue usage in volleyball.”
Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport
(1995).

Krampe, R. Th., et al. “Maintaining excellence: deliberate practice and elite performance in young and older pianists.”
Journal of Experimental Psychology
(1996).

Higbee, K. L. “Novices, apprentices, and mnemonists: acquiring expertise with the phonetic mnemonic.”
Applied Cognitive Psychology
(1997).

Nevett, M. E., et al. “The development of sport-specific planning, rehearsal, and updating of plans during defensive youth baseball game performance.”
Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport
(1997).

Masters, K., et al. “Associative and dissociative cognitive strategies in exercise and running: 20 years later, what do we know?”
Sport Psychologist
(1998).

Pieper, H.-G. “Humeral torsion in the throwing arm of handball players.”
American Journal of Sports Medicine
(1998).

Gabrielsson, A. “The Performance of Music.” In
The Psychology of Music
, edited by D. Deutsch. Academic Press, 1999.

Helson, W. F., et al. “A multidimensional approach to skilled perception and performance in sport.”
Applied Cognitive Psychology
(1999).

Helgerud, J., et al. “Aerobic endurance training improves soccer performance.”
Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise
(2001).

Hopkins, W. G., et al. “Variability of competitive performance of distance runners.”
Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise
(2001).

Pelliccia, A., et al. “Remodeling of left ventricular hypertrophy in elite athletes after long-term deconditioning.”
Circulation
(2002).

Goldspink, G. “Gene expression in muscle in response to exercise.”
Journal of Muscle Research and Cell Motility
(2003).

Maguire, E. A., et al. “Routes to remembering: the brains behind superior memory.”
Nature Neuroscience
(2003).

McPherson, S., et al. “Tactics, the neglected attribute of expertise: problem representations and performance skills in tennis.” In
Expert Performance in Sports
, edited by Janet Starkes and K. Anders Ericcson. Human Kinetics Publishers, 2003.

Pantev, C., et al. “Music and learning-induced cortical plasticity.”
Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences
(2003).

Duffy, L. J., B. Baluch, and K. A. Ericsson. “Dart performance as a function of facets of practice amongst professional and amateur men and women players.”
International Journal of Sports Psychology
35 (2004): 232–45.

Ericsson, K. A. “Deliberate practice and the acquisition and maintenance of expert performance in medicine and related domains.”
Academic Medicine
(2004).

Prior, B. M., et al. “What makes vessels grow with exercise training?”
Journal of Applied Physiology
(2004).

Pyne, D. B., et al. “Progression and variability of competitive performance of Olympic swimmers.”
Journal of Sports Sciences
(2004).

Wittwer, M., et al. “Regulatory gene expression in skeletal muscle of highly endurance trained humans.”
Acta Physiologica Scandinavica
(2004).

Baker, J., et al. “Cognitive characteristics of expert, middle of the pack, and back of the pack ultra-endurance triathletes.”
Psychology of Sport and Exercise
(2005).

Bengtsson, S. L., et al. “Extensive piano practicing has regionally specific effects on white matter development.”
Nature Neuroscience
(2005).

Larsen, H., et al. “Training response of adolescent Kenyan town and village boys to endurance running.”
Scandinavian Journal of Medicine and Science in Sports
(2005).