Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Recommended Resources Any guidance on how to stop mental lapses?

Hi,

I am new to the discussion forum and this is my first post, hopefully in the right place.

One of my son's talents is chess. He is ranked #1 in the state for his age group and roughly 10-15th nationally. He started beating me consistently when he was about 8 years old (he is now 10 years old). He loves the game and we are proud of his accomplishments.

His performance is very uneven at times. He sometimes gets into a losing streak with players far weaker. The most common reason for his losses is due to obvious mental lapses such as missing that his piece can be either captured or directly attacked (things that an absolute novice can usually see). This is all the more surprising because his wins against stronger players usually require him to see 6 or more moves deep.

Does anyone have any suggestions on how to avoid mental lapses?

Welcome Mithawk! My immediate reaction is that it probably isn't possible to avoid lapses, and that the most productive place to focus may actually be on the reaction to a lapse - how to avoid letting one affect the next move and the next game. Chess is very unusual, compared to other things that one might think of as using some of the same skills, such as mathematics, because of the real-time competition aspect. Maybe it's more like music performance, or more like fencing, in its need for utterly lapse-free concentration, but of course it's unlike them in the kinds of skills it uses. With the latter group in mind, I actually wonder whether Alexander technique might be helpful? That might sound like a weird idea, but if there's a good teacher of that near you I'd suggest having a conversation about it. There's something about the way it encourages presence in the moment that might be appropriate (and it could hardly hurt, especially for someone who needs to be encouraged to go out and probably spends too much time sitting?).

Are there specific things that he could check, routinely, before committing to a move? Maybe a literal memorised checklist might be a good prompt; although I suspect that the number of things that would have to be on it might make that impractical.

ColinsMum,

Thank you for your response. I haven't heard of the Alexander technique and I will look into it.

My son actually has a checklist that he usually follows (it is actually fairly short--consisting of three steps). His mental lapses are due to the occasional times that he completely forgets to perform the checklist.

Is he allowed to write the checklist in his fingers during the match?
If not, write the checklist on the fingers outside the match so that he comes to associate each finger with each step.

Did you read Josh Waitzkin's 'The Art of Learning?'
I read most of it and would be interested in your thoughts on it.

Welcome!
Grinity

Hi Grinity,

Naturally I thought I knew all about Josh Waitzkin from the "Searching for Bobby Fischer" story, but somehow I completely missed that he wrote this book. Perhaps it is because I think of Josh's story as a cautionary tale about a profoundly gifted chess player who burned out and therefore never achieved his potential as an adult.

I see now that he shifted gears and became very successful in the martial arts. I will put "The Art of Learning" on my reading list for the Christmas holidays and I will let you know.

Fun how life is, isn't it?
Happy Reading,
Grinity

Colinsmum, I haven't heard of the Alexander technique - could you tell us about it? Just something brief. FWIW, the mental lapse thing, forgetting in the moment to go through a checklist that you know well, this happens to my ds in a very different situation - he has an expressive language disability and he practices checklists for how to "jog" his expressive output when he's asked to either give a talk or write papers in school, and even though he has his checklists (in writing and in memory) he has times when he forgets to use them (actually that would be a lot of the time for him!)... so I'm wondering if something mentioned here might help him OTOH, I could be reaching a bit "out there".

Congrats to your ds on his accomplishments in chess!

polarbear

I'm no expert and in fact have never learned AT properly, so let me just refer you here:
http://www.alexandertechnique.com/at.htm
The reason, you'll see, why I thought my suggestion might be seen as a strange one is that AT is really a physically-focused thing. But when I have heard people (usually musicians, occasionally dancers) rave about it - music schools in the UK sometimes offer it rather routinely - it seems to have been as much for its "quiet the mind", "focus on what's important" qualities as on what it does for excess muscle tension, which is why I thought about it in this context. Only an idea, though!