A New Study Questions Everything We Knew About Early Talent

"Some advice can feel like career suicide, and what follows fits that description.We are taught from an early age that success belongs to those who commit young, specialize fast, and hone their chosen craft with relentless zeal. This logic shapes everything about how we approach schooling and our careers, to the point where even suggesting that early specialization might be a mistake feels like heresy. And yet, a sweeping new review published in Science gives us reason to do exactly that."

"Drawing on data from more than 34,000 world-class adult performers across domains including science, music, chess, and elite athletics, Güllich et al. (2025) reach a striking conclusion. While early specialization predicts early success, it does not predict who ultimately reaches the highest levels of performance. More than that, the authors find that across domains, early stars and later world-class performers are largely different people. Roughly 90 percent of top youth performers are not the same individuals who dominate at peak adult performance."

Data from more than 34,000 world-class adult performers across science, music, chess, and elite athletics show that early specialization predicts early success but not who attains the highest adult performance. Across domains, early youth stars and later world-class adults are largely different people; roughly 90 percent of top youth performers are not the same individuals who dominate at peak adult levels. Many eventual top adults demonstrated slower progress, broader exploration, and a wider range of development instead of narrow early commitment. Institutional pressures favor coherent, uninterrupted specialization, yet coherence appears to measure early advantage more than ultimate potential.

Read at Psychology Today