You know the old phrase, "Practice makes perfect. "That may not always be true. According to a recent study published in Royal Society Open Science, there are other factors for reaching elite(最优秀的）levels of ability.
The researchers set out to replicate(复制）the process of a new-famous 1993 study of top-level violinists and pianists. On average, the earlier study found that top-ranked musicians had clocked over 10,000 hours of practice by the age of 20. It put their success down to the hours spent practicing, downplaying the importance of natural, learning skills and other factors.
Author Malcolm Gladwell later relied on this study for his 2008 book, Outliers. He called 10,000 hours "the magic number of greatness".
Questioning this conclusion, Brooke Macnamara and Megha Maitra, from Case Western Reserve University in Ohio, US, sought volunteers to put the 10,000-hour rule to the test.
The pair organized violinists into three groups, based on whether their tutors rated them as the best players, good players, or average players. They were then told to record how long they practiced every week.
They found that the “average” players had around 6,000 hours of practice. However, there was little separating the good from the best musicians. Both groups had approximately 11,000 hours of practice by the age of 20. In all, the number of hours spent practicing accounted for about a quarter of the skill difference across the three groups.
＂Once you get to the highly skilled groups,practice stops accounting for the difference," Mannamara told the Guardian. "Smaller factors then determine who goes on to that superelite level."
＂The factors depend on the skill being learned: in chess it could be intelligence or working memory, in sport it may be how efficiently a person use oxygen," she said. She also pointed out the factor of motivation and the interactions of different factors.
Ralf Krampe, a co-author of the 1993 study, disagrees, saying the quality of practice and teaching does matter.“....I still consider deliberate(刻意的）practice to be by far the most important factor," he told the Guardian.
It should be said that neither side discounts the value of making an effort. Even if you aren't destined（命中注定）to be the world's greatest violinist, practice will make you a little bit better than you were yesterday.
