Giftedness

GIFTEDNESS, a term that has become widespread in psychology over recent decades despite a considerable lack of clarity in its content. Most often, this term is applied in defining a person's mental abilities, but one can also speak of giftedness in other directions—musical, motor (physical), and others. The main starting factor for the doctrine of giftedness is the presence of individual differences in separate abilities, in particular in mental work, and these differences are quite stable (within known limits). This fact, which psychology has encountered more and more often and which is well known to simple observation, brought differential psychology to life as the psychology of individual differences, and the problem of giftedness was closely linked to it in its origin. Regarding the latter, two questions arise: 1) what is the essence of giftedness and consequently in what do its individual differences find expression; 2) does it depend on innate abilities or is it developed as a result of experience and training under the influence of the environment. The first question is solved quite simply in those separate, more or less isolated directions when it comes to sharply expressed special "talents." A classic example of such giftedness is musicality, associated mainly with the presence of a good ear (true, it is not only a matter of distinguishing pitch, but also their duration, a "sense of rhythm," etc., but all this belongs to the narrow field of auditory perceptions). Already in motor giftedness, the relations are more complex—here they distinguish the strength of movements, their smoothness, accuracy, coordination, agility, and so on, but all these aspects are united by an understandable biological closeness—their direct relation to the motor function of the nervous system. As for mental giftedness, even the basic question remains unresolved here—does it consist of the sum of separate gifts in the field of cognitive functions (perception, recognition, memory, judgment, criticism, etc.) or does it represent something lying outside these separate aspects. The first point of view is held by Thorndike, Ziehen ("intellectual predisposition breaks down into a multitude of predispositions in a very complex mutual dependence on each other; a general ability of intellect or giftedness does not exist"), Héper ("the understanding of giftedness in the sense of an integral psychic function must be decisively rejected"), partly 0. Lipmann, who decomposes mental giftedness from the standpoint of structural psychology into separate types of structuring. Conversely, Spearman speaks of a general ability, a "general central factor," which he thinks to define as a "plastic function of the nervous system"; Meumann speaks of a "unified general makeup of the individual." To the question of what the essence of this unified general factor is, similar answers are given by Claparède ("the ability to solve new problems with the help of thinking"; "an instrument of adaptation that comes to the fore at the moment when other means of adaptation—instinct and habit—prove insufficient") and W. Stern ("Giftedness is the general ability of an individual to consciously orient their thinking to new requirements, the general ability of mental adaptation to new tasks and conditions of life"). These definitions are the most widespread. However, they are not without objections; thus, Thorndike objects to the possibility of separating the "new" from the non-new, Spearman points to the teleological nature of the adaptability sign and the absence of a definition of the very essence of giftedness. Thus, even in the definition of the concept of giftedness, many disagreements have arisen. Naturally, this has also affected the entire problem, and in the question of the formation of giftedness—on the role of internal and external factors in its genesis—there are even more uncertainties. To answer this question, it is necessary to examine giftedness in different subjects, in the same subject at different periods of life and under different conditions, in various generations of individual families. Consequently, the question rests on the research methodology. Meanwhile, there are many difficulties in this regard. The methodology for studying mental giftedness has recently attracted great attention from psychologists; differences in the mental working capacity of individuals established by simple everyday experience required more precise definitions and even measurements ("mentimetry"). Applied psychology took into account the practical importance of these studies regardless of the principal resolution of the question of the essence of giftedness. This underestimation of the proposition about the inseparable connection between the method and the object of study made itself felt in the vagueness of the results obtained. The study of mental giftedness usually reduces to proposing various tasks (tests) that the subject must solve. These tasks are presented either in arbitrary combinations from a large reserve of them currently available, or in the form of specific systems with a fixed selection of individual tests (Binet-Simon, Claparède, Rossolimo, army alpha and beta systems, and many others). In the latter case, the systems either focus on varying difficulty of questions (without distinguishing the individual aspects of the intellect to which these questions belong) so that their solution can be compared with a certain standard (the Binet-Simon measuring scale), or they attempt to establish the ratios of individual aspects both among themselves and in comparison with certain "norms," thus determining the individual components of mental work and their connection ("psychomechanics" in Rossolimo's psychological profiles). The first category of systems (to which the majority belong) has a significant drawback in the form of a summative evaluation: a test is considered equal in the general evaluation despite the fact that tests may concern different aspects of mental activity, whereas it is far from indifferent whether tests are performed predominantly, for example, on memory or on criticism. Systems of the type of Rossolimo's profiles try to avoid this shortcoming, being more successful in this respect since they allow for the differentiation of individual aspects; the main shortcoming here is the absence of standards of gradual development. Depending on the number of solved tasks, the majority of research systems make it possible to determine the so-called "giftedness quotient," which represents the quotient of dividing the actual "intellectual level" of the subject (determined by the number of solved tests) by the "norm" to which they should correspond according to their age, education received, etc. If this quotient is equal to or almost equal to 1, giftedness is considered normal; if it is less than 1, some degree of mental retardation is established; if the quotient is greater than 1, increased giftedness is spoken of. A common shortcoming of all systems for studying mental giftedness is that the majority of tests represent tasks of a verbal-logical order. Recently, practical giftedness has been contrasted with this gnostic giftedness. Practical giftedness differs from simple dexterity—whether in individual manipulations or in the speed of adaptation to new requirements of the object—in that thought operations play a role in it, but unlike gnostic giftedness, the latter serve here as a means to achieve a non-theoretical goal. Methods for studying practical giftedness, which have become widespread recently, especially in psychotechnics, represent a significant correction to previous methods in terms of identifying giftedness independently of training of a predominantly verbal-logical character. Such a correction and an attempt to free oneself from the overly verbal nature of the tests are the so-called "silent tests" oriented toward individuals with insufficient command of speech (the American army beta series, Otis tests, Pintner-Paterson tests for the non-speaking, and others). However, despite all corrections, all methods of studying mental giftedness are insufficient to solve the problem of giftedness. All of them reduce to determining the state of the mind (intellect) at a given moment (see Intellect) and from their results one cannot directly determine giftedness, but can only infer it, taking into account all other factors of mental development. And the mind as the use of previous experience in a new environment is a complex function of both this environment, and previous experience, and the biological base—nervous activity (at the expense of which giftedness could be attributed), and the entire course of previous development, the entire complex dynamics of previous interactions of the biological characteristics of the individual and the social conditions of its formation. Therefore, by determining the state of the mind at a given moment, making a kind of "cross-section" of it, we risk either overestimating the significance of environmental or structural factors or connecting them too mechanically, considering the environment as a revealer of the structural-biological characteristics of the organism, without taking into account the complex processes of their interaction, the "longitudinal section," the dynamics of mental development.

To conclude from these data regarding the state of giftedness as a stable constitutional factor is possible only with very great reservations. Another essential methodological defect of the methods for investigating mental giftedness is their attempt to reduce the results to a summary quantitative assessment, which is an arbitrary simplification of the complexity of the studied processes, a reduction of qualitatively heterogeneous values to a common denominator. As a result, despite the abundance and variety of individual research techniques and the multitude of works produced, the question of the formation of giftedness still lacks sufficiently definite and convincing data. The existing attempts to prove the hereditary stability of giftedness lose their value due to the inadequacy of the research methodology. Thus, Peters attempted to determine the similarity of giftedness between parents and children based on the school reports of both; his material—3,952 families—yielded a correlation coefficient between the school success of parents and children of 0.29. Pearson, using material from over 3,000 schoolchildren, established a correlation coefficient between the academic performance of brothers and sisters (according to teachers' reports) at 0.52 (which is completely identical to the correlation of their bodily resemblance); Thorndike determined this coefficient to be 0.32. More recent studies, proceeding from the premise of the absolute inadequacy of determining giftedness by school performance (which is influenced, apart from giftedness, by a mass of various factors), were based on test trials, for example, the Binet-Simon scale. In such a study, Gordon obtained a correlation coefficient for brothers and sisters equal to 0.54 (after excluding accidental similarity due to closeness of age). Twin studies are demonstrative; Thorndike, who gave a correlation coefficient for brothers and sisters of 0.32, obtained for twins (based on material of 50 pairs) 0.78, and he makes no distinction between monozygotic and dizygotic twins. Individual cases of monozygotic twins show a great similarity in giftedness; Muller calculated that the similarity between two twin sisters according to psychological examination data is so great that the probability of such a coincidence in two random individuals would be less than 1:2,500 (meanwhile, it is important to note that these sisters were raised from the age of 2 weeks by different adoptive parents and lived in completely different conditions). Facts similar to the latter are more convincing due to the thoroughness of the study and the versatility of accounting for conditions, but they are isolated, while the greater part of the rest is insufficiently convincing for the above-mentioned reasons. Research concerning the inheritance of individual abilities or special forms of giftedness, especially musicality, is more developed and easier to execute. The best-known example in this regard is the Bach family (Johann Sebastian Bach), where high musical giftedness was traced over five generations; out of Johann Sebastian's 19 children, not a single one was unmusical, and 5 were significant musicians. A similar picture is presented by the Mozart-Weber family. According to Kurella's data, in 28 families of musicians, the stability of musical giftedness could be traced in no less than 3 generations. However, genetic studies show that musical giftedness in its inheritance, despite its apparent simplicity, has a very complex structure. Motor giftedness, in connection with the application for its investigation of the Ozeretsky metric scale, constructed similarly to the Binet-Simon scale for mental giftedness, now has the opportunity to be studied in its stability. The defect of the Binet-Simon scale in the form of the summariness of the assessment is preserved here as well, but it has less significance, since the various aspects of motor skills are more easily united in a single biological factor of the effector activity of the nervous system than the various aspects of mental activity in the problematic "single central factor." However, material in this area, similar to the above, has not yet accumulated. Thus, speaking of giftedness, one must reckon with two possibilities. Either we are speaking of partial, separate special abilities—here there is definite material speaking of a certain stability of them, at least in pronounced cases, and justifying to a certain extent the name of giftedness—or this term is applied to the field of "general, mental giftedness," and then the question is subject to criticism from the most diverse sides. The very term giftedness in this plane (and it is in this plane that it is most often used) is unsuccessful, because it preempts the answer regarding the purely biological determinism of the intellect when there are no sufficient grounds for this. The concept of giftedness is unclear, because the question of the existence of general giftedness and its structure has not been resolved; meanwhile, having originated in Western European psychological literature as an expression of crude empiricism (the fact of individual differences), idealism (the assumption of some special psychic basis for these differences), and naive biologism ("the plastic function of the nervous system" by Spearman), the concept of giftedness, having passed into our literature, spread without due criticism even wider than was required by the needs of an accurate translation (the word "ozarennost" [giftedness] is used here to translate not only "allgemeine geistige Begabung", but also the German "Intelligenz", the French "intelligence", and the English "intelligence", which emphasize the relation to the mind but have no shade of giftedness). The methodology for investigating giftedness does not correspond at all to the task, representing instead an investigation of the mental state. A definite substitution of the term giftedness occurred here, a substitution fixed especially expressively in tests by the class interest of the bourgeoisie. This substitution was also reflected in the incorrect formulation of the problem: instead of investigating what in the intellect is biologically conditioned and stable and what is developed as a result of development in the surrounding environment, or even more correctly, how this development occurs and what the pathways of interaction between biological and environmental factors are, they began to solve the question of the biological nature of "giftedness" as a whole; further, instead of singling out various types of the structure of the intellect, they began to give a summary quantitative assessment of the "single general factor" on the basis of investigating individual aspects. All this leads to the fact that giftedness (in the sense of general mental giftedness) can be defined in the words of Dunayevsky as "a rather unsuccessful term for designating a rather indefinite concept." But the criticism of this state of affairs can go even further. The substitution of the concept of "mind" as a complex, dynamically developing structure by the concept of giftedness appears then as overly biologizing simplification on the surface, but in essence, it is a socially reactionary view. Fluctuating theoretically between an idealistic-vitalistic construction, on the one hand, and mechanistic naive biologism, on the other, the problem of giftedness practically provides an opportunity to notice in it class motives of reducing complex, largely socially conditioned processes to simple biological structures, i.e., attempts to cover up temporary, largely extraneous differences with unshakeable "laws of nature." To active intervention in the development of the intellect, the problem of giftedness in this form opposes the fatalism of "innate possibilities," and explains the defects of social selection by natural selection. This is what determines that "social resonance" which this problem causes—a resonance that arose not without grounds and is explained by the one-sidedness of the formulation of the very problem of giftedness in the above-depicted form. The resolution of the problem must proceed in the direction such that, without denying the fact of the existence of individual differences in mental work capacity, without refusing to reveal them by appropriate research methods, and admitting the presence of certain biological bases for these differences, psychology should try to uncover not the invariability of certain features, but the conditions of their variability.

M. Andreev. Motor giftedness cannot be considered a completely definite concept. That which is usually designated by this term appears to be the result of the subject's motor achievements, depending not only on innate giftedness (in the strict sense of the word), but also on exercises, acquired skills, and so forth. Although motor giftedness in the strict sense almost does not lend itself to experimental determination, nevertheless this term conditionally and with reservations retains a certain significance, since the presence of variations in the sphere of motor skills with more or less sharp deviations in the directions of plus and minus is undoubted, by which differences in motor giftedness are also determined under approximately equal other conditions influencing the results of motor achievements. At the same time, motor giftedness is diverse, manifesting itself unequally in various forms of movements, as a result of which one can speak of partial giftedness; for example, good manual dexterity is possible with general clumsiness. Such unevenness of motor giftedness, if one excludes the significance of one-sided exercises (especially the influence of professions), depends on the unequal development of individual motor systems, which is especially clearly revealed in the study of motor insufficiency in childhood, when the influence of acquired skills still has less significance than in adults. Recently, Dupre's form with predominant underdevelopment of the pyramidal systems, Homburger's motor infantilism, and cerebellar, extrapyramidal, and frontal insufficiency (Gurevich) have been described. In addition, motor insufficiency can manifest itself in the underdevelopment of special types of movement (e.g., speech, writing). The study of normal motor function has shown that, following this path, one can isolate definite correlations between the motor formula and the subject's physique and character. In this sense (i.e., in the sense of the correlation between physique, character, and motor function), one can conditionally speak of definite motor types with varying characteristics of their motor giftedness. The features of the motor appearance and the degree of motor achievements naturally change sharply depending on the specific conditions of the subject's development, which also influence the structure of motor function and the degree of motor giftedness. The determination of motor features (giftedness) is very important for pedagogical purposes, physical culture, and vocational guidance. For the study of motor giftedness, a special test-apparatus methodology is proposed. In particular, Ozeretsky has constructed a metric scale for childhood, which provides the possibility of an approximate and orienting determination of motor giftedness by age.

M. Gurevich.