Reading Comprehension

PT140 · S4 · P3 · Q15 The Origins of Superior Performance

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In certain fields of human endeavor, such as music, chess, and some athletic activities, the performance of the best practitioners is so outstanding, so superior even to the performance of other highly experienced individuals in the field, that some people believe some notion of innate talent must be invoked to account for this highest level of performance.

Topic

Superior performance (the super elite athletes, performers, specialists, in any given field).

Frameworks

Answer a Question What causes elite performance? Some people - innate talent Author -- Nah, mostly acquired skills

Old / New Old - we used to assume elite performance came from innate talent. New - now we think it comes from mostly acquired skills

Challenge a Position Position -- some notion of innate talent must be invoked to explain why elite performers are so much better than their peers. Author's Challenge -- no, the real difference-makers are motivation and practice. The elite performers had all the necessary traits and just added 10+ years of intense training.

Main Point

Superior performance is probably less about innate talent and more about skills / physiological changes acquired through long, intense training, for which motivation may be the best predictor.

P1 - Intro to Topic, Position 1 (Old)

This paragraph introduces the concept of superior performance, then introduces the Position that the passage will be challenging: innate talent must be part of what explains elite performance. This view is supplemented with some data.

P2 - Pivot to New, Evidence against Old

We get a doubleheader Purpose Pivot (but, yet, however, recently). This introduces the New position, which the Author will ultimately endorse: acquired skills are the bigger part of elite performance,

The author shows evidence against the idea that the magic abilities of elite performers are innate gifts, rather than specialized capacities gained through training.

P3 - Evidence Supporting New

Here the author talks about how all these elite performers had over a decade of intense training. The paragraph suggests that training brings about these superpowers. You can get the chess master's mind or you can get the fast twitch fibers of whatever sporting action you're perfecting, if you train hard for at least a decade. Only some traits like height are beyond the reach of being acquired through training.

P4 - Summary of Challenge

The author makes more explicit that she accepts this New explanation (elite performance comes mainly through acquired factors) as the truth and then she speculates on an implication of that view: if elite performance is mainly based on how much you practice, then motivation is really the special sauce of the masters.

15.

Which one of the following most accurately represents the primary function of the final paragraph?

  1. It makes proposals for educational

    Out of Scope: educational reform

    The author might lightly propose some new directions for research ("how well do motivational factors predict mastery?"), but she certainly doesn't dedicate that last paragraph to proposing we reform our educational system.

    1% picked this

  2. It demonstrates that two consequences

    Too Strong: demonstrates Unsupported: at odds

    The verb 'demonstrate' or 'prove' is almost always too strong. Our authors are dealing with thorny complexity, so they "argue / suggest / undermine". They usually don't do anything so black and white as prove or demonstrate. Beyond that, the author is never pointing out that two implications are at odds with another. She's saying "Innate, you're wrong". "Acquired, you seem right". "Okay, one implication of Acquired is that motivational factors will matter a lot."

    4% picked this

  3. It recapitulates the evidence against

    Unsupported: recapitulates Too Strong: advocates

    To recapitulate is "to list all over again", "to re-summarize", i.e. "to provide a recap." The evidence against innate talent (the supposed heritability of outstanding talent) appears in the end of the 2nd and throughout the 3rd. There's no recap of it in the 4th paragraph. The author just asserts, "all that evidence we just discussed, therefore, goes against innate talent and for acquired talent." The author also does not advocate a new research direction. She points out a potential implication of the acquired-talent explanation. We might imagine how some researchers could choose to pursue research on that topic, but the author doesn't have any language that is recommending that researchers study this.

    29% picked this

  4. It raises and answers a

    Unsupported: Possible Objection

    There's no possible objection to the acquired-talent hypothesis presented in the 4th paragraph (or anywhere else in the passage). It would make more sense to say that this paragraph "summarizes the author's view of the importance of intense training".

    5% picked this

  5. Correct

    It draws two inferences regarding

    Why this is right

    Drawing an inference = drawing a conclusion Does the author draw two conclusions in this paragraph? Let's look for keywords. Indeed! The first sentence is a conclusion: The evidence, therefore, does not support claim X, since it suggests instead that claim Y. The second sentence (jeez, this paragraph is only two sentences!?) is also a conclusion. Since sustained training depends on Y, and since elite performers usually show Z, [we can conclude that] motivation factors are more A than innate talent is. Okay, all the keywords make it relatively quick to see that, yes, this paragraph draws two conclusions. Do they regard the explanatory and predictive roles of possible factors involved in mastery? (I am so angry at this answer and the test that wrote it) Yes, answer, they do. The first sentence is a conclusion about the explanatory role of a factor in the development of mastery. It's saying that "extended intense training (+ all required physical traits) may suffice to account for (i.e. "explain") elite performers". The second sentence is a conclusion about the predictive role of motivation. If mastery is linked to training time, then motivation to train should be a potentially effective predictor of superior performance.

    Skill tested: Paragraph Purpose · how this choice captures the passage's function is the move to repeat next time.

    62% picked this

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