The Origins and Development of High Ability

266 Pages·2013·8.46 MB·English

THE ORIGINS AND DEVELOPMENT
OF HIGH ABILITY
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Ciba Foundation Symposium 178
THE ORIGINS AND
DEVELOPMENT OF
HIGH ABILITY
A Wiley-lnterscience Publication
1993
JOHN WILEY & SONS
Chichester . New York . Brisbane . Toronto . Singapore
BCiba Foundation 1993
Published in 1993 by John Wiley & Sons Ltd
Baffins Lane, Chichester
West Susses PO19 IUD, England
All right5 reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced by any means,
or transmitted, or translated into a machine language
without the written permission of the publisher.
Ciba Foundation Symposium 178
viii+ 258 pages, 13 figures, 19 tables
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
The Origins and development of high ability/ [edited by] Gregory R.
Bock, Kate Ackrill.
p. cm.-(Ciba Foundation symposium; 178)
Proceedings of the Symposium on the Origins and Development of
High Ability, held at the Ciba Foundation, London, Jan. 25, 1993.
“A Wiley-Interscience publication.”
ISBN 0-471-93945-5
1. Gifted persons-Congresses. 2. Gifted children-Congresses.
I. Bock, Gregory. 11. Ackrill, Kate. 111. Symposium on the Origins
and Development of High Ability (1993 : Ciba Foundation)
IV. Series.
BF412.074 1993
153.9’ 8-dc20 93-29488
CIP
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is
available from the British Library
ISBN 0 471 93945 5
Phototypeset by Dobbie Typesetting Limited, Tavistock, Devon.
Printed and bound in Great Britain by Biddles Ltd, Guildford.
Contents
Symposium on The Origins and Development of High Ability, held at the
Ciba Foundation, London, 25-27 January 1993
The topic of this symposium was proposed by Professor Michael J. A.
Howe
Editors: Gregory R. Bock (Organizer) and Kate Ackrill
R. C. Atkinson Introduction 1
R. J. Sternberg The concept of ‘giftedness’: a pentagonal implicit theory 5
Discussion 16
D. K. Detterman Giftedness and intelligence: one and the same? 22
Discussion 3 1
C. P Benbow and D. Lubinski Psychological profiles of the
mathematically talented: some sex differences and evidence supporting
their biological basis 44
Discussion 60
R. Plomin and L. A. Thompson Genetics and high cognitive ability 67
Discussion 79
M. J. A. Howe The early lives of child prodigies 85
Discussion 92
J. Sloboda Musical ability 106
Discussion 1 14
J. C. Stanley Boys and girls who reason well mathematically 119
Discussion 134
K. A. Heller Scientific ability 139
Discussion 150
N. Colangelo, S. G. Assouline, B. Kerr, R. Huesman and D. Johnson
Mechanical inventiveness: a three-phase study 160
Discussion 170
VI Contents
H. Gardner The relationship between early giftedness and later
achievement 175
Discussion 182
M. Csikszentmihalyi and I. S. Csikszentmihalyi Family influences on the
development of giftedness 187
Discussion 200
W. Fowler, K. Ogston, G. Roberts-Fiati and A. Swenson Accelerating
language acquisition 207
Discussion 2 17
K. A. Ericsson, R. Th. Krampe and S. Heizmann Can we create gifted
people? 222
Discussion 232
R. C. Atkinson Closing remarks 250
Index of contributors 251
Subject index 253
Participants
R. C. Atkinson (Chairman) Office of the Chancellor, University of
California at San Diego, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla, CA 92093-0005,
USA
C. P. Benbow Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth, Department of
Psychology, Iowa State University, W 1 12 Lagomarcino Hall, Ames,
IA 50011-3180, USA
T. J. Bouchard Jr Minnesota Center for Twin & Adoption Research,
Department of Psychology, University of Minnesota, Elliott Hall, 75
East River Road, Minneapolis, MN 55455-0344, USA
N. Colangelo The Connie Belin National Center for Gifted Education,
University of Iowa, College of Education, 210 Lindquist Center, Iowa
City, IA 52242-1529, USA
M. Csikszentmihalyi Department of Psychology, University of Chicago,
5848 S. University Avenue, Chicago, IL 60637, USA
D. K. Detterman Department of Psychology, Case Western Reserve
University, 10900 Euclid Avenue, Cleveland, OH 44106-7123, USA
Y. Dudai The Weizmann Institute of Science, IL-76100 Rehovot, Israel
K. A. Ericsson Department of Psychology, R-54, The Florida State
University, Tallahassee, FL 32306-1051 , USA
H. J. Eysenck Institute of Psychiatry, De Crespigny Park, Denmark Hill,
London, SE5 8AF, UK
Y .-Q. Fang Department of Psychology, East China Normal University,
3663 Zhong-Shan-Bei Road, Shanghai 200062, China
W. Fowler Center for Early Learning and Child Care, 29 Buckingham
Street, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
J. Freeman 21 Montagu Square, London W1H lRE, UK
vii
Vill Participants
H. Gardner The Development Group, Harvard Project Zero, Harvard
University Graduate School of Education, 323 Longfellow Hall, Appian
Way, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
H. E. Gruber Department of Developmental Psychology, Teacher’s
College, Columbia University, New York, NY 10027, USA
G. Hatano Psychology, Dokkyo University, 1 - 1 Gakuen-Cho, Soka-Shi,
Saitama-Ken 340, Japan
J. Hautamaki Department of Teacher Education, Section of Special
Education, PO Box 32 (Helsinginkatu 34), 00014 Helsinki University,
Finland
K. A. Heller Department of Psychology, University of Munich,
Leopoldstrasse 13, D-80802 Munich, Germany
M. J. A. Howe Department of Psychology, University of Exeter,
Washington Singer Laboratories, Perry Road, Exeter, EX4 4QG, UK
D. Lubinski Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth, Department of
Psychology, Iowa State University, W112 Lagomarcino Hall, Ames, IA
5001 1-3 180, USA
F. J. Monks Center for the Study of Giftedness, University of Nijmegen,
PO Box 9104, 6500 HE Nijmegen, The Netherlands
R. Plomin Center for Developmental and Health Genetics, College of
Health and Human Development, Pennsylvania State University,
University Park, PA 16802, USA
R. Sitruk-Ware Medical Department, CIBA-GEIGY Ltd, CH-4002, Basel,
Switzerland
J. A. Sloboda Department of Psychology, University of Keele, Newcastle-
under-Lyme, Staffordshire, ST5 5BG, UK
J. C. Stanley Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth, Johns Hopkins
University, 156A Bloomberg Center, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA
R. J. Sternberg Department of Psychology, Yale University, Box 11A,
Yale Station, New Haven, CT 06520-7447, USA
Novartis Foundation Symposium
Edited by GregoIy R. Bock, Kate Ackrill
Copyright 0 1993 by Ciba Foundation
I ntroductio n
Richard C. Atkinson
Office of the Chancellor, University of California at San Diego, 9500 Gilman Drive, La
Jolla, CA 92093-0005, USA
Genius. . . is the capacity to see ten things where the ordinary man sees one, and
where the man of talent sees two or three, plus the ability to register that multiple
perception in the material of his art.
Ezra Pound 1935
It is my pleasure to call this symposium to order, and, in particular, to thank
the trustees, executive council, and staff of the Ciba Foundation for their
gracious hospitality. In the course of hundreds of occasions since its first
scientific meeting in 1949, the Foundation has more than fulfilled Lord
Beveridge’s promise of a ‘laboratory for mixing scientists’; it has been a major
catalyst in the discovery process. I am sure that I speak for those present, and
many who are not, in commending the Ciba Foundation for its outstanding
contribution to the scientific enterprise.
We are here as guests of the Foundation to discuss the origins and development
of high ability. For the purposes of these introductory remarks, and in keeping
with the spirit of the papers to be presented, I would prefer to address the topic
of high ability in terms of its limiting case: genius. This may seem an old-
fashioned word, which some might fear carries too much baggage from bygone
scientific excursions, but ‘genius’ has the virtue of evoking the ‘big picture’,
reminding us that these discussions bear upon long-standing, fundamental, and
largely unresolved issues of human psychology. Until proven wrong, therefore,
let me assume that the terms ‘high ability,’ ‘giftedness,’ and ‘genius’ can be
treated as synonymous-and that it is useful to do so, lest we find ourselves
either mired in semantic debates or waffling on the distinctiveness of our
subject-matter.
The phenomenon of genius has provoked thinkers for many centuries,
probably because it presents itself as inexplicable. In antiquity, the Romans spoke
of the genius of a person or place, meaning its indwelling, protective demon
or tutelary spirit. By the sixteenth century this idea had been metaphorically
extended to describe the innate capacity of a person (Onions 1966, p 393). Since
the eighteenth century, the word has come to refer chiefly to extraordinary native
intellectual power, and, ironically, the original, spatialized meaning is now a
source of metaphoric usages (e.g., ‘the genius of the nation’).
1
2 Atkinson
This drift in meaning did not affect the essential property of genius, however,
which is its singularity vis-u-vis normal intelligence and conventional ways of
thinking. Whether viewed as rising mysteriously from within (‘native’) or
mysteriously from outside (‘demonic’) the psyche, genius is special; it is both
different and rare.* This feature makes the ‘genius of genius,’ so to speak,
especially difficult to capture. We cannot predict where genius will occur or
how it will manifest itself. We do not know its causes or correlations, or, with
any certainty, how to measure it. We are not even sure what it is-but we know
genius when we see it.
Paraphrasing Whitehead, one can ask: what can be done to obscure the vast
darkness of this subject? Before the members of this symposium move to answer
this question, let me briefly indulge a chairman’s privilege by proposing a few
framing issues.
The largest of these issues-one of the largest in all of the twentieth century
behavioural science-is that of Nature versus nurture. Depending on the view
one takes of genius in this respect, various subsidiary questions follow. Thus,
if genius is innate, existing from birth, is it a product of genetic mutation or
some other genetic event of extremely low probability, or is it inherited in a
more or less normal fashion?
What are the evolutionary implications of these alternatives? The rarity of
genius suggests that if it is subject to normal inheritance processes, it is not
a trait or combination of traits for which there is strong positive selection. This
would not be surprising, in view of the conservative nature of most human
populations, for most of human history. In contrast with normal high
intelligence, which has probably enjoyed Nature’s favour throughout human
phylogenetic history, persons of strikingly different and unpredictable mental
habits might well be at a disadvantage in the game of reproduction and survival.
Seneca’s famous comment that there is no great genius without some touch of
madness reflects a widespread wariness in folk attitudes, one which over the
aeons may have contributed to maintaining the rarity of genius.
All of this might soon change. Nowadays, sperm banks with designer genes,
in vitro fertilization, futuristic cloning techniques, and other biomedical
technologies have created a eugenics that could significantly increase the
incidence of genius in the population. As we speak, the Human Genome Project
is deciphering the hiddenmost codes of mental functioning. Purposive evolution
is a risky, ethically troubled business, but we can be sure that if the technology
exists to maximize the chances of genius among offspring, many aspiring parents
will avail themselves of it. Given that such procedures are likely to remain
expensive, such tinkering can only widen the disparities between rich and poor,
the educationally advantaged and the educationally deprived.
*Note that the word ‘gifted’ displays the same ambiguity as to where the ‘gift’ comes from.