PubMed · 14268893
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G A FERGUSON. 1965. HUMAN ABILITIES.. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.ps.16.020165.000351
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The terms gifted, talented, and intelligent all have meanings that suggest an individual's highly proficient or exceptional performance in one or more specific areas of strength. Other than Spearman's g, which theorizes about a general elevated level of potential or ability, more contemporary theories of intelligence are based on theoretical models that define ability or intelligence according to a priori categories of specific performance. Recent studies in cognitive neuroscience report on the neural basis of g from various perspectives such as the neural speed theory and the efficiency of prefrontal function. Exceptional talent is the result of interactions between goal-directed behavior and nonvolitional perceptual processes in the brain that have yet to be fully characterized and understood by the fields of psychology and cognitive neuroscience. Some developmental studies report differences in region-specific neural activation, recruitment patterns, and reaction times in subjects who are identified with high IQ scores according to traditional scales of assessment such as the WISC-III or Stanford-Binet. Although as cases of savants and prodigies illustrate, talent is not synonymous with high IQ. This review synthesizes information from the fields of psychometrics and gifted education, with findings from the neurosciences on the neural basis of intelligence, creativity, profiles of expert performers, cognitive function, and plasticity to suggest a paradigm for investigating talent as the maximal and productive use of either or both of one's high level of general intelligence or domain-specific ability. Anat Rec (Part B: New Anat) 277B:21-36, 2004.
Developmental cognitive neuroscience is an evolving field that investigates the relations between neural and cognitive development. Lying at the intersection of diverse disciplines, work in this area promises to shed light on classic developmental questions, mechanisms subserving developmental change, diagnosis and treatment of developmental disorders, and cognitive and neuroscientific topics traditionally considered outside the domain of development. Fundamental questions include: What are the interrelations between developmental changes in the brain (e.g. in connectivity, chemistry, morphology) and developmental changes in children's behavior and cognitive abilities (e.g. representational complexity, ability to sustain selective attention, speed of processing)? Why, and how, is learning enhanced during certain periods in development? How is our knowledge organized, and how does this change with development? We discuss preliminary investigations of such questions and directions for future work.
Mathematical talent is an asset in modern society both at an individual and a societal level. Environmental factors such as quality of mathematics education undoubtedly affect an individual's performance, and there is some evidence that genetic factors also may play a role. The current study was performed to investigate the feasibility of undertaking genetics studies on mathematical ability. Because the etiology of low ability in mathematics is likely to be multifactorial and heterogeneous, we evaluated families ascertained through a proband with high mathematical performance in grade 7 on the SAT to eliminate, to some degree, adverse environmental factors. Families of sex-matched probands, selected for high verbal performance on the SAT, served as the comparison group. We evaluated a number of proxy measures for their usefulness in the study of clustering of mathematical talent. Given the difficulty of testing mathematics performance across developmental ages, especially with the added complexity of decreasing exposure to formal mathematics concepts post schooling, we also devised a semiquantitative scale that incorporated educational, occupational, and avocational information as a surrogate for an academic mathematics measure. Whereas several proxy measures showed no evidence of a genetic basis, we found that the semiquantitative scale of mathematical talent showed strong evidence of a genetic basis, with a differential response as a function of the performance measure used to select the proband. This observation suggests that there may be a genetic basis to specific mathematical talent, and that specific, as opposed to proxy, investigative measures that are designed to measure such talent in family members could be of benefit for this purpose.