The Nature and Nurture of Talent: A Bioecological Perspective on the Ontogeny of Exceptional Abilities

Papierno, Paul B.; Ceci, Stephen J.; Makel, Matthew C.; Williams, Wendy M.

doi:10.4219/jeg-2005-343

Cited by 26 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 24 publications

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“…In responding to Howe et al (1998) and arguing for a genetic basis to ability, other researchers have put forward compelling accounts of nature–nurture interactions in the development of talent (see Dai & Coleman, 2005a, 2005b; Lohman, 2005, Papierno, Ceci, Makel, & Williams, 2005; Sternberg, 1998). Simonton (1999, 2001) argued that current understandings of talent as innate may be overly simplistic.…”

Section: Consensus and Controversy: What Do We Know From Psycholmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…They also provide some insight into the Terman (1925; Terman & Oden, 1959), Gottfried et al (1994), and Subotnik et al (1989) outcomes. See Papierno et al (2005) for an explication of the range of outcomes possible when nature and nurture interact to facilitate talent development. The resolution of the nature/nurture debate is further complicated when we consider the range of domains in which outstanding talent is manifested.…”

Section: Consensus and Controversy: What Do We Know From Psycholmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Rethinking Giftedness and Gifted Education

Subotnik

Olszewski‐Kubilius²,

Worrell

2011

Psychol Sci Public Interest

791

476

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For nearly a century, scholars have sought to understand, measure, and explain giftedness. Succeeding theories and empirical investigations have often built on earlier work, complementing or sometimes clashing over conceptions of talent or contesting the mechanisms of talent development. Some have even suggested that giftedness itself is a misnomer, mistaken for the results of endless practice or social advantage. In surveying the landscape of current knowledge about giftedness and gifted education, this monograph will advance a set of interrelated arguments: The abilities of individuals do matter, particularly their abilities in specific talent domains; different talent domains have different developmental trajectories that vary as to when they start, peak, and end; and opportunities provided by society are crucial at every point in the talent-development process. We argue that society must strive to promote these opportunities but that individuals with talent also have some responsibility for their own growth and development. Furthermore, the research knowledge base indicates that psychosocial variables are determining influences in the successful development of talent. Finally, outstanding achievement or eminence ought to be the chief goal of gifted education. We assert that aspiring to fulfill one's talents and abilities in the form of transcendent creative contributions will lead to high levels of personal satisfaction and self-actualization as well as produce yet unimaginable scientific, aesthetic, and practical benefits to society. To frame our discussion, we propose a definition of giftedness that we intend to be comprehensive. Giftedness is the manifestation of performance that is clearly at the upper end of the distribution in a talent domain even relative to other high-functioning individuals in that domain. Further, giftedness can be viewed as developmental in that in the beginning stages, potential is the key variable; in later stages, achievement is the measure of giftedness; and in fully developed talents, eminence is the basis on which this label is granted. Psychosocial variables play an essential role in the manifestation of giftedness at every developmental stage. Both cognitive and psychosocial variables are malleable and need to be deliberately cultivated. Our goal here is to provide a definition that is useful across all domains of endeavor and acknowledges several perspectives about giftedness on which there is a fairly broad scientific consensus. Giftedness (a) reflects the values of society; (b) is typically manifested in actual outcomes, especially in adulthood; (c) is specific to domains of endeavor; (d) is the result of the coalescing of biological, pedagogical, psychological, and psychosocial factors; and (e) is relative not just to the ordinary (e.g., a child with exceptional art ability compared to peers) but to the extraordinary (e.g., an artist who revolutionizes a field of art). In this monograph, our goal is to review and summarize what we have learned about giftedness from the ...

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Section: Consensus and Controversy: What Do We Know From Psycholmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Consensus and Controversy: What Do We Know From Psycholmentioning

confidence: 99%

Rethinking Giftedness and Gifted Education

Subotnik

Olszewski‐Kubilius²,

Worrell

2011

Psychol Sci Public Interest

791

476

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…According to these researchers, excellence should be considered as a property that develops according to dynamic person-environment interactions. This position entails that the emergence of excellence cannot be explained by linear additions of various personal and environmental components, but by (multiplicative) interactions among these components over time (e.g., Walberg et al, 1984 ; Simonton, 1999a , 2001 , 2005 ; Dickens and Flynn, 2001 ; Papierno et al, 2005 ; Lykken, 2006 ; Davids and Baker, 2007 ; Phillips et al, 2010 ). As one example, a high genetic endowment can lead to more successful learning in the domain at issue, leading to active selection of environments that can provide high-quality practice, resulting in even more efficient use of the genetically based learning abilities, and so forth.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Dynamic Network Model to Explain the Development of Excellent Human Performance

et al. 2016

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Across different domains, from sports to science, some individuals accomplish excellent levels of performance. For over 150 years, researchers have debated the roles of specific nature and nurture components to develop excellence. In this article, we argue that the key to excellence does not reside in specific underlying components, but rather in the ongoing interactions among the components. We propose that excellence emerges out of dynamic networks consisting of idiosyncratic mixtures of interacting components such as genetic endowment, motivation, practice, and coaching. Using computer simulations we demonstrate that the dynamic network model accurately predicts typical properties of excellence reported in the literature, such as the idiosyncratic developmental trajectories leading to excellence and the highly skewed distributions of productivity present in virtually any achievement domain. Based on this novel theoretical perspective on excellent human performance, this article concludes by suggesting policy implications and directions for future research.

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“…Recently, explicit developmental perspectives of giftedness have been growing in popularity among researchers (e.g., Horowitz, Subotnik, & Matthews, 2009;Papierno, Ceci, Makel, & Williams, 2005;Sternberg, 2001). Such developmental theories propose that giftedness is not a fully formed trait.…”

mentioning

confidence: 98%

Gifted Students’ Implicit Beliefs About Intelligence and Giftedness

Makel

Snyder

Thomas

et al. 2015

Gifted Child Quarterly

Self Cite

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Growing attention is being paid to individuals' implicit beliefs about the nature of intelligence. However, implicit beliefs about giftedness are currently underexamined. In the current study, we examined academically gifted adolescents' implicit beliefs about both intelligence and giftedness. Overall, participants' implicit beliefs about giftedness and intelligence were significantly positively correlated while also having statistically significant mean differences, suggesting that they perceived the nature of the two constructs differently. Specifically, many students viewed intelligence as malleable (incremental view) and giftedness as fixed (entity view), whereas very few students viewed giftedness as malleable and intelligence as fixed; however, heterogeneity was observed. The beliefs identified in the current study provide important insight into the domain-specific nature of implicit beliefs of gifted students and suggest that caution be used against using terms like giftedness and intelligence interchangeably.

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The Nature and Nurture of Talent: A Bioecological Perspective on the Ontogeny of Exceptional Abilities

Cited by 26 publications

References 24 publications

Rethinking Giftedness and Gifted Education

Rethinking Giftedness and Gifted Education

A Dynamic Network Model to Explain the Development of Excellent Human Performance

Gifted Students’ Implicit Beliefs About Intelligence and Giftedness

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