What Makes Musical Prodigies?

Abstract

Musical prodigies reach exceptionally high levels of achievement before adolescence. Despite longstanding interest and fascination in musical prodigies, little is known about their psychological profile. Here we assess to what extent practice, intelligence, and personality make musical prodigies a distinct category of musician. Nineteen former or current musical prodigies (aged 12–34) were compared to 35 musicians (aged 14–37) with either an early (mean age 6) or late (mean age 10) start but similar amount of musical training, and 16 non-musicians (aged 14–34). All completed a Wechsler IQ test, the Big Five Inventory, the Autism Spectrum Quotient, the Barcelona Music Reward Questionnaire, the Dispositional Flow Scale, and a detailed history of their lifetime music practice. None of the psychological traits distinguished musical prodigies from control musicians or non-musicians except their propensity to report flow during practice. The other aspects that differentiated musical prodigies from their peers were the intensity of their practice before adolescence, and the source of their motivation when they began to play. Thus practice, by itself, does not make a prodigy. The results are compatible with multifactorial models of expertise, with prodigies lying at the high end of the continuum. In summary, prodigies are expected to present brain predispositions facilitating their success in learning an instrument, which could be amplified by their early and intense practice happening at a moment when brain plasticity is heightened.

Deliberate practice in music: Development and psychometric validation of a standardized measurement instrument

“…However, the need to experience immediate positive sensations as well as the general lack of motivation are negatively related to practice quality. Flow proved to be another highly important predictor of deliberate practice, in line with previous findings (Marin & Bhattacharya, 2013; Marion-St-Onge et al, 2020; O’Neill, 1999; Sinnamon et al, 2012): flow proneness in music may encourage musicians to engage in demanding practice routines in view of the positive sensations and states of mind that they will experience while performing music. Despite the significant correlations with DPMI main scale and subscales (see Table 3), Openness to experience was not a significant predictor in the DPMI regression model: this may indicate that personality traits have marginal importance in predicting practice quality, especially when compared with other predictors related to musical education as Musical training and Practice quantity.…”

Lyndall Hendrickson s pedagogy: A learner-centred, multi-sensory violin teaching approach

“…Whilst studies by Marion-St-Onge et al detail the superior performance working abilities of children identified as 'child prodigies' or talented children (Marion-St-Onge et al, 2020), attention is also drawn to the fact that there are students who struggle in the processing of information to learn violin performance skills. In the last few years there has been extensive research in how music teachers can assist these 'different children' by the use of multi-sensory techniques in music therapy and social integrative pedagogy.…”