[00:00.02]2007年黑暗版阅读历年真题解析第一篇
[00:00.54]沪江考研
[00:01.43]BY：daisy8475
[00:02.00]If you were to examine the birth certificates of every soccer player
[00:06.61]in 2006’s World Cup tournament，
[00:09.67]you would most likely find a noteworthy quirk:
[00:12.71]elite soccer players are more likely to have been born
[00:16.17]in the earlier months of the year than in the later months.
[00:20.08]If you then examined the European national youth teams
[00:23.38]that feed the World Cup and professional ranks,
[00:26.27]you would find this strange phenomenon to be even more pronounced.
[00:30.08]What might account for this strange phenomenon? Here are a few guesses:
[00:34.86]a) certain astrological signs confer superior soccer skills;
[00:39.31]b) winter-born babies tend to have higher oxygen capacity,
[00:44.00]which increases soccer stamina;
[00:46.45]c) soccer-mad parents are more likely to conceive children in springtime,
[00:51.70]at the annual peak of soccer mania;
[00:53.80]d) none of the above.
[00:56.30]Anders Ericsson, a 58-year-old psychology professor
[01:00.16]at Florida State University,
[01:02.10]says he believes strongly in “none of the above.”
[01:05.52]Ericsson grew up in Sweden,
[01:07.68]and studied nuclear engineering until he realized
[01:11.28]he would have more opportunity
[01:13.68]to conduct his own research if he switched to psychology.
[01:17.28]His first experiment,
[01:19.34]nearly 30 years ago, involved memory:
[01:22.28]training a person to hear and then repeat a random series of numbers.
[01:26.78]“With the first subject, after about 20 hours of training,
[01:30.62]his digit span had risen from 7 to 20,” Ericsson recalls.
[01:36.08]“He kept improving, and after about 200 hours of training
[01:40.20]he had risen to over 80 numbers.”
[01:42.50]This success, coupled with later research showing that
[01:46.16]memory itself is not genetically determined,
[01:49.78]led Ericsson to conclude that the act of memorizing
[01:53.73]is more of a cognitive exercise than an intuitive one.
[01:58.78]In other words, whatever inborn differences two people may exhibit
[02:03.93]in their abilities to memorize,
[02:06.46]those differences are swamped by how well each person “encodes” the information.
[02:12.29]And the best way to learn how to encode information meaningfully,
[02:16.32]Ericsson determined,was a process known as deliberate practice.
[02:21.56]Deliberate practice entails more than simply repeating a task.
[02:25.74]Rather, it involves setting specific goals,
[02:29.07]obtaining immediate feedback and concentrating as much on technique as on outcome.
[02:35.41]Ericsson and his colleagues have thus taken to studying expert performers
[02:40.77]in a wide range of pursuits, including soccer.
[02:44.32]They gather all the data they can,
[02:46.49]not just performance statistics and biographical details
[02:50.52]but also the results of their own laboratory experiments with high achievers.
[02:55.75]Their work makes a rather startling assertion:
[02:58.64]the trait we commonly call talent is highly overrated.
[03:02.99]Or, put another way, expert performers—whether in memory or surgery,
[03:08.40]ballet or computer programming—are nearly always made, not born.