Giftedness and talent in music: Nature, nurture, and/or luck?

10.8.2024 1 Like 0 kommenttia Guadalupe López Íñiguez

This blog post briefly summarises various positions against and in favour of giftedness in music and other domains, and critically discusses some of those positions in regards what influences gifted individuals’ talent development.

What makes people gifted? The eternal (and rather heated) debate of nature vs nurture plus luck

What comes to giftedness and talent, people hold extremely diverse and often contradictory views. Some people believe in giftedness and some refuse to do so. Some believe talent development is a question strictly related to environmental support, lucky chances in life, and/or effort exerted, whereas for others, becoming an exceptional professional in any area will also depend on the potential (i.e., gifts) you come equipped with when you are born, and whether those are identified early on. Wherever you position yourself within this palette of options in the giftedness-talent realm comes from a combination of your observations about how the world works, your positive/negative learning experiences across your entire life, but also what you might have read (which could involve peer-reviewed research publications but also pseudoscientific and personal writings of doubtful nature). Let’s take four examples to exemplify some of the most relevant positionings regarding talent development and giftedness in relation to it.

To start, we need to consider that, globally, many music educators, musicians, institutional leaders, and parents have come across highly cited pieces of research on the development and determinants of musical excellence that were published by Michael Howe, Jane Davidson and John Sloboda about three decades ago (1991a; 1991b; 1998) – one of them with the persuasive title “Innate talents: Reality or myth?”. You might want to read the rather critical response by educational psychologist Françoys Gagné (1999) about the theoretical and methodological standpoints of that research, but also the subsequent response of the authors themselves on the same year. A fascinating debate. Be as it may, and given the continuously growing and massive empirical research on giftedness and talent in music and other domains, we cannot anymore assert that the development of musical excellence is exclusively related to the environmental support a learner receives, or that gifts do not exist globally in all kinds of individuals, or that giftedness is purely a social construct outside of human bodies and minds.

We could also mention here the bestsellers by Howard Gardner on “Multiple Intelligences” (e.g., 1983), where intelligence is understood as distinct abilities/gifts that operate independently within people. However, gifts, abilities, or whatever we want to call those ‘intelligences’ do not exist in isolation and this traditional compartmental take on, for example, what Gardner refers to as ‘spatial intelligence’ would somehow preclude developing skills in other non-spatial areas. It is quite possible that if you are a music teacher, you might have that book on your shelf, as it has influenced the teaching of music in general schools, as well as the spread of neuromyths that, for instance, view music (and musical intelligence) as a utilitarian tool at the service of academic development in mahts, physics, etc. This so-called ‘theory’ is actually a model that represents one of those research and educational misteries: Why such view is still supported, widespread, and used in classrooms globally? Specially when there is no factual empirical evidence to consider the multiple intelligencies view as an actual theory (see an interesting discussion in Watherhouse, 2023). Sure, Gardner’s contribution to the field of giftedness and talent is seminal because, among other things, he helped us all understand that talent equates with precocious biopsychological potential, and that a highly gifted individual might end up failing to achieve that potential. However, compartmenting gifts with the consequence of (as it often happens) telling someone is or is not musical, logical, or spiritual does not necessarily serve the educational community in addressing the special needs of gifted learners.

In addition, you might have heard about the rule of the 10.000 hours needed for anyone to become talented (i.e., an expert) in something, by K. Anders Ericsson, Ralf Th. Krampe, and Clemens Tesch-Romer (e.g., 1993; 1995a; 1995b) – a widely socially accepted view that anyone spending 10.000 of deliberate hours on something, will become a professional in that area. I just calculated that I have spent that time cooking my meals since I turned 16 and moved outside of my parents home to study in another city, and I am not worth a Michelin star. At least not yet, despite investing in an insane amount of kitchen tools and following dozens of international chef stars in Instagram. Although the research by Ericsson and colleagues has been debunked^[1] in recent years by researchers tackling human behavior and expertise development (who agree that, for some people, performance excellence in any field might take 3.000 hours and for some, 30.000), this belief still keeps on been shared and written about globally – this, too, has an impact in how we approach talent development in music (and how much one should or should not practice).

These three positionings towards giftedness and the development of expertise and talent, aided by (what I venture say) hundreds of scholars and practitioners worldwide who kind-of-workship these views (I don’t blame them, these are after all top-class scholars), have greatly influenced on how we understand giftedness in music. In other words: our conceptions and beliefs on what giftedness is, wether giftedness exists in infants, children and youngsters at all, and whether being gifted and developing talent is a question of psychophysiobiology, the environment in which one grows up, or being lucky, have developed in relation to our folk psychology and folk pedagogy, which sometimes, are not bullet proof. You can read my previous blogposts^[2] to delve a little more on this aspect in relation to giftedness and talent.

And, last but not least, let’s also unfold a bit about being lucky, because in the equation of giftedness and talent, we not only need to explain how our genomes interact with our identities and ecosystems, nor how people are different from each other in their affective responses to difficulties, or the foundational laws of behavioural genetics. No matter how gifted you are, how supported you are on your endeavours, and how much deliberate effort you exert in what you love to do: if you get unlucky on multiple and repeated occasions, it goes without saying that the future might not look too bright for you… 

In educational psychology, we understand luck through things we cannot fully explain or control, but that have a short- and long-term impact in our life and in our chances to become succesful at something. If magic exists, this is the closest we, non-magical folks, can get to it… For example, when twins share a bunkbed in their room, one will be assigned the upper bed, and the other the lower one – this innocent and aleatory assignment by their parents, believe it or not, has an impact. Another example: you might go to an orchestral audition which is definitely for you as the strongest applicant, but your car wheel might break on the road and you miss to arrive in time – no need to explain the consequences of this unlucky moment for your career. Although I sometimes need to really critically think about some of his views, I generaly admire the brilliant work of Steven Pinker – one of the greatest minds of our time –, so let’s watch a video where he explains these issues rather well, and where he also cites the late and exceptional Judith Rich Harris regarding her significant contribution to understanding luck in relation to developing talent(s): 

Delving a little more into famous positions in favor and against giftedness and talent

For the curious, keen reader who has managed to survive the previous everlastingly long section, here are some additional, famous positions in favour and against giftedness and talent, in case you want to explore further. I leave to your discretion to critically assess whether these highly cited works are theoretically and methodologically flawed or not. You will need to read them through to know, because otherwise this would become a book instead of a blog post…

Additional, famous positions in favour of the existence of giftedness/talent:

• Eysenck (1995): Genetically transmitted talents* are necessary but not sufficient for the emergence of genius.
• Feldman (1988): Child prodigies possess talent innately. Talent* cannot be acquired and talented children demonstrate exceptional mastery to an already existing body of knowledge. 
• Winner (1996): [Gifts are] learned domain-specific traits that might develop in favorable circumstances but cannot be manufactured. Many gifted children go unrecognized, and many are discovered.

Additional, famous positions against the existence of giftedness/talent:

• Ericsson & Charness (1995a; 1995b): The effects of extended, deliberate practice are more decisive than is commonly believed. Although children undoubtedly differ in the ease with which they perform various skills, no early predictors of adult performance have been found.
• Howe et al. (1998): Except in the case of autistic savants, talent* in music, is purely explained by environmental issues such as early experiences, preferences, opportunities, habits, and/or training.
• Sloboda et al. (1991): In Non-Western cultures, musical achievements are considerably more widespread than in our own, there are no early signs of unusual excellence in outstanding adult instrumentalists, and very early experiences may be the real cause of what is interpreted as talent later (see Gagné’s critique to this approach in the previous section).
• Sosniak (1990) and also Manturzewska (1990): One can predict adulthood success only in a few cases of highly trained young musicians.
• Super (1976): Skills acquired by infants are partly because of their parents deliberately teaching them (e.g. correlation between early singing and being a professional musician is related to intense parental support).

[*Note to ourselves: Talent in these publications refers to gifts, see next section for clarifying the concepts of gifts/giftedness and talent(s)].

To delve a bit more deeply on this topic (nature, nurture, luck), in my next blog post in November, I will introduce to you the Differentiated Model of Giftedness and Talent (DMGT) by Françoys Gagné (2021), so stay tuned!

About this blog post

This blog post has been written to mark the World Council for Gifted and Talented Children’s International Day of the Gifted, which is celebrated annually on August 10. The International Day of the Gifted is a global day of action to raise awareness around the world about gifted children and their learning and social/emotional needs. This post is part of the blog post series related to the author’s 5-years research project: “The Politics of Care in the Professional Education of Children Gifted for Music” (2022-2027), funded by the Research Council of Finland.

Read more about the World Council for Gifted and Talented Children

Read more about the “Caring for Musically Gifted Children” project

Cite as: López-Íñiguez, G. (2024, August 10). “Giftedness and talent in music: Nature, nurture, and/or luck?” Uniarts Helsinki’s Emerging Perspectives on Instrumental Pedagogy blog. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.13890690

Writer

Dr. Guadalupe López-Íñiguez, University Researcher, Academy Research Fellow, and Docent at Uniarts Helsinki.

References

• Ericsson, K. A., Krampe, R. T., & Tesch-Römer, C. (1993). The role of deliberate practice in the acquisition of expert performance. Psychological Review, 100(3), 363–406.
• Ericsson, K. A., & Charness, N. (1995a) Expert performance: its structure and acquisition. American Psychologist, 49, 725-747.
• Ericsson, K. A., & Charness, N. (1995b) Abilities: evidence for talent or characteristics acquired through engagement in relevant activities. American Psychologist, 50, 803-804.
• Eysenck, H. J. (1995). Genius: the natural history of creativity. Cambridge University Press.
• Howe, M. J. A., & Sloboda, J. A. (1991a) Young Musicians’ accounts of significant influences in their early lives: 1. The family and the musical background. British Journal of Music Education, 8, 39-52.
• Feldman, D. H. (1988). Creativity: Dreams, insights, and transformations. In R. J. Sternberg (Ed.), The nature of creativity(pp 271-297). Cambridge University Press.
• Gagne, F. (1999). Nature or Nurture? A Re-examination of Sloboda and Howe’s (1991) Interview Study on Talent Development in Music. Psychology of Music, 27(1), 38-51.
• Gagné, F. (2021). Differentiating giftedness from talent. The DMGT perspective on talent. Routledge.
• Gagné, F., & McPherson, G. E. (2016). Analyzing musical prodigiousness using Gagné’s Integrative Model of Talent Development. in G. E. McPherson (Ed.), Musical prodigies: Interpretations from Psychology, Education, Musicology, and Ethnomusicology (pp. 3-114). Oxford University Press.
• Gardner, H. (1983). Frames of mind: A theory of multiple intelligences. Basic Books.
• Howe, M. J. A., & Sloboda, J.A. (1991b) Young musicians’ accounts of significant influences in their early lives: 2. Teachers, practising and performing. British Journal of Music Education, 8, 53-63.
• Howe, M. J. A., Davidson, J. W., & Sloboda, J. A. (1998). Innate talents: Reality or myth? Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 21(3), 399-407.
• López-Íñiguez, G., & McPherson, G. E. (2023). Caring approaches to young, gifted music learners’ education: a PRISMA scoping review. Frontiers in Psychology, 14, 1167292.
• López-Íñiguez, G., & Westerlund, H. (2023). The politics of care in the education of children gifted for music: A systems view. In K. S. Hendricks (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of care in music education (pp. 115–129). Oxford University Press.
• Manturzewska, M. (1990). A biographical study of the life-span development of professional musicians. Psychology of Music, 18: 112-139.
• McPherson, G. E. (Ed.) (2016). Musical prodigies. Interpretations from Psychology, Education, Musicology, and Ethnomusicology. Oxford University Press.
• Sloboda, J. A., & Howe, M. J. A. (1999). Musical Talent and Individual Differences in Musical Achievement: A Reply to Gagne (1999). Psychology of Music, 27(1), 52-54.
• Sosniak, L. A. (1990). The tortoise, the hare, and the development of talent. In: Encouraging the development of exceptional abilities and talents, ed. M. J. A. Howe, British Psychological Society.
• Super, C. (1976). Environmental effects on motor development: the case of “African infant precocity”. Developmental Medicine and Child Neurology, 18: 561-567.
• Waterhouse, L. (2023). Why multiple intelligences theory is a neuromyth. Frontiers in Psychology,14:1217288.
• Winner, E. (1996). The rage to master: the decisive role of talent in the visual arts. In: The road to excellence: the acquisition of expert performance in the arts and sciences, ed. K. A. Ericsson, Erlbaum.

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^[1] See, for example, Malcolm Gladwell’s book, Outliers and Geoff Colvin’s book, Talent Is Overrated.

^[2] Link to blog to access the posts: https://blogit.uniarts.fi/en/blogs/emerging-perspectives-on-instrumental-pedagogy/

^[3] See also in music: Gagné & McPherson (2016); López-Íñiguez & McPherson (2023); López-Íñiguez & Westerlund (2023).