Which is an exceptional natural ability, especially in a particular activity?

Talent is an exceptional natural ability, especially in a particular activity, such as music. Talent is often thought of as the kind of ability that comes without training—something that you're born with. It is often contrasted with skill, which is an ability acquired and developed through practice.

Talent reflects how you're hard-wired. That's what sets the concept apart from that of knowledge or skills. Talent dictates your moment-by-moment reactions to your environment -- there's an instinctiveness, an immediacy implied. Talent results in consistently recurring patterns of thought or behavior. To deviate from those patterns requires conscious effort, and such deviations are difficult to sustain.

Knowledge and skills, on the other hand, imply learned behavior, actions that require more active cognitive processing. What you know reveals more about your experiences and education than about who you are at the core. Behavior derived from knowledge and skills can be changed far more easily than talent-based behavior, as new information subordinates old in an individual's consciousness.