Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Stereotype threat: girls and chess

I think the article is specifically making a point about girls playing BOYS, though. It's not that girls are not competitive--it's that when they play boys, they get it into their heads that they are going to lose (because "boys are better at chess"). So they do, even when favored to win.

I still think that most girls are less competitive than boys.

And I'm a little confused about the original article - if the girl came into the tournament with a higher rating than a boy, what gender chess players did she play in the previous tournament? If girls consistently underperform against boys, then wouldn't their rating slip and begin to reflect that and their future performances would be less and less of an underperformance?

Performance deficits triggered by stereotype
threat were more likely to appear when the young
female sample was playing males in more challenging situations. Specifically, females did worse
than expected when competing against a strong
opponent (achieving 56% of what would be predicted based on prior ratings), a moderate one
(82% of expected performance), an opponent
from a higher grade (73% of expected performance), and an opponent of the same grade(83% of expected performance). This supports the contention that anxiety, arousal, and other
processes related to stereotype threat only impair performance on difficult, challenging tasks...When competing
against weaker opponents and opponents from
lower grades, young females performed about as
expected or only marginally worse so. This suggests that playing someone perceived as weaker
or younger may buffer the negative impact of
playing against a male chess player.

For the oldest participants in the sample,
playing against a male opponent did not significantly lower overall performance. One possible
explanation is that these older players represent a
select sample that has been immune to the attrition common to female chess players.

In the tournaments we examined,
those females who demonstrated the largest performance deficits were the least likely to play in
future tournaments and waited longer between
tournaments if they did play. This fits with the
notion that stereotype threat can produce disengagement from the threatened domain

males
who did worse when playing other males did not
disengage from chess any more than males whose
performance exceeded expectation

yet


which fits with general findings that men overrate their performance and capabilities while women underrate.

I still think that most girls are less competitive than boys. They just don't care about winning as much as the boys do. If my eldest ever got into actual chess competition, she probably wouldn't do so well - and I think it does have to do with gender.

For example, about five years ago we were at a State Little League Softball Tournament (division for girls 13-16). (Let's just ignore the fact that Little League is a joke.) There was a Little League Baseball State Tournament at the same complex. All of the kids looked pretty competitive while they were playing. These were the eight top teams in the state. However, what did the players do after the game? The girls wanted to go see the local mall, asked where we were going to eat dinner, got out the phones and started texting. The boys played catch, went to the batting cages, etc.

I'm not saying my girls don't practice to keep up with the competition. There are some days that they practice their sport(s) for four hours. But if they didn't have organized practices, there is no way they would practice that much. Most girls seem to put emphasis on being social and doing a variety of things rather than being really intense in one area.

Look at competitions like Mathcounts - I don't think a girl has ever won at Nationals. Look at the 2013 USAMO winners - not a girl among them.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/maaorg/8977795239/in/photostream/

This has nothing to do with the potential of girls - there are girls who are capable of winning these competitions - but I think that most lack the intense focus and desire.

Of course, that isn't all bad - the girls may be more well-rounded and can operate well in social situations, which sometimes proves to be more important in the long run.

And I'm a little confused about the original article - if the girl came into the tournament with a higher rating than a boy, what gender chess players did she play in the previous tournament? If girls consistently underperform against boys, then wouldn't their rating slip and begin to reflect that and their future performances would be less and less of an underperformance?

I still think that most girls are less competitive than boys. They just don't care about winning as much as the boys do. If my eldest ever got into actual chess competition, she probably wouldn't do so well - and I think it does have to do with gender.

For example, about five years ago we were at a State Little League Softball Tournament (division for girls 13-16). (Let's just ignore the fact that Little League is a joke.) There was a Little League Baseball State Tournament at the same complex. All of the kids looked pretty competitive while they were playing. These were the eight top teams in the state. However, what did the players do after the game? The girls wanted to go see the local mall, asked where we were going to eat dinner, got out the phones and started texting. The boys played catch, went to the batting cages, etc.

I'm not saying my girls don't practice to keep up with the competition. There are some days that they practice their sport(s) for four hours. But if they didn't have organized practices, there is no way they would practice that much. Most girls seem to put emphasis on being social and doing a variety of things rather than being really intense in one area.

Look at competitions like Mathcounts - I don't think a girl has ever won at Nationals. Look at the 2013 USAMO winners - not a girl among them.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/maaorg/8977795239/in/photostream/

This has nothing to do with the potential of girls - there are girls who are capable of winning these competitions - but I think that most lack the intense focus and desire.

Of course, that isn't all bad - the girls may be more well-rounded and can operate well in social situations, which sometimes proves to be more important in the long run.

I would argue strongly that much of this is based on how girls are still socialized today. Marketers wield a lot of power and influence and girls are encouraged from a very young age to be consumers concerned with outward appearance and shopping at the local mall.

We've had some recent discussions about girls and chess. This just came across my desk in my news reader for work:

http://bps-research-digest.blogspot.com/2014/01/girls-underperform-when-they-play-chess.html

Interesting and frustrating. I observed at my DS's recent chess tournament that the # of girls got smaller and smaller as the kids got older, with only one or two girls in the K-12 section. My own DD is much better at chess than she generally lets on, though there is a complex situation here with it being her brother's "thing." I was very pleased to hear that the school chess coach (who also gives lessons during school) is now trying to recruit my DD to the chess team. This is as it should be (though it's totally up to her if she wants to be on the team--right now she doesn't want to) and suggests that DD is finally playing to her ability in class rather than messing around and underplaying. I really read her the riot act about that when I found out she was doing it. Maybe I should have been a bit more relaxed, but as I told her, when she has ability but is faking that she doesn't, she is perpetuating the misconception that girls can't be good at chess.

Rothgerber and Wolsiefer first surveyed 77 female school chess players and found they were familiar with the stereotype that men are better at chess than women (a stereotype reflected in the fact that there is only one woman, Judit Polgár, in the world's top 100 chess players; see pic).

I've been to a lot of chess tournaments, and sex differences in chess ability are not being discussed before the games begin. This is another reason to doubt the "stereotype threat" explanation for sex differences in chess.

Gee I wonder why girls might under perform if the world of chess is populated by those who believe there is any justification for having men and women compete separately. I strongly reject the idea that boys are inherently better at chess than girls. I cannot even believe any credence is given to that position in 2014.

I strongly reject the idea that boys are inherently better at chess than girls. I cannot even believe any credence is given to that position in 2014.

Bostonian, did you read the full study?

Your objections don't make very much sense in light of their methods. Their point wasn't, "Girls are bad at chess; it must be because of stereotype threat." Their point was, "Girls at certain ages and in certain situations lose to boys at higher than expected rates, statistically--perhaps due to stereotype threat." As I noted earlier, the oldest girls appeared to be somewhat immune to ST, which is interesting. The girls who were most susceptible were younger and were playing older, more highly rated boys (a situation that could be especially intimidating).

Also, if girls are naturally worse at chess and that's why they don't play as much or win as much, I wonder how you explain the fact that there are many more girls playing chess in the younger grades than later on? Do girls get more and more "chess stupid" as they age?

What about your daughter, who plays chess, correct? (And is pretty good at it, IIRC.) It would be hard to know that your dad expects less of you due to your chromosomes.

When my own daughter tells me that she does not want to be in chess club any more because it's too boy-identified--and I know that she is good and would be an asset to the club--it's pretty hard for me to think there aren't a lot of other girls in the same shoes.

Why would you automatically reject this idea? Here is one plausible explanation for it.

* Spatial ability is an important part of chess
* Boys have an higher standard deviation of spatial ability than girls.
* If the mean of boys and girls spatial ability is the same, then both extremes would be dominated by boys. The boys with high spatial ability would typically dominate girls with high spatial ability when it comes to chess.

There are of course exceptions. I know an extremely talented young girl player, who routinely dominates skilled boys that are a few years older.

Maybe, relative to boys, they do. Girls and boys are more different at age 15 than 5, and the greater differential in running speed at age 15 is not due primarily to socialization. I think it is plausible that puberty increases intellectual differences between the sexes.

Couldn't avoiding an activity that you would otherwise enjoy because there are too many boys (or girls) doing it be considered sexist? Our local chess club is majority Chinese, with some Indians and fewer whites (most of whom have Russian parents). If someone avoids the chess club because they don't like the ethnic mix, that's their problem, not the club's.

Couldn't avoiding an activity that you would otherwise enjoy because there are too many boys (or girls) doing it be considered sexist?

I'm skeptical that your premises are correct. But even assuming they are, for argument's sake, how does a characteristic about the extreme tails of the distribution of "ability" (arguably >3sd) translate into a meaningful comment about a gender split in chess participation closer the mean, say +1-3sd, where most players fall? You can't meaningfully infer the expected performance of the gender distribution from the tails.

My understanding is that spatial ability is a reason why the strongest boys still do better in math than the strongest girls, even though girls are generally doing better in school than boys these days.

suppose if you want to be competitive at chess, you'd have to have the talent and the motivation to win and the ability to perform even when feeling intimidated, etc. Girls who are talented at chess may not have those other factors. No big deal, IMO. Who's to say that getting along with peers isn't more important than kicking butt at chess?

Ok, which premise do you doubt?

Do you doubt that there is a difference in spatial ability between boys and girls? My understanding is that spatial ability is a reason why the strongest boys still do better in math than the strongest girls, even though girls are generally doing better in school than boys these days.

Do you doubt that spatial ability is important? My son wouldn't use the term spatial ability, but he would tell you that his ability to look 8-9 moves into a position helps him win a lot of games.

For the final part, consider the reason that Malcom Gladwell gave as to why a disproportionate number of professional soccer players are born in January, February and March in his book Outliers. His explanation was that because these were the oldest kids in their class, they were more slightly more talented than the others. They received more coaching over time, which continually increased their skill levels over their slightly less capable players. The less skilled players dropped out as competition increased, leaving a disproportionate number of players born in the first three months of the year.

I have to question the underlying goal of chess clubs, though. Is it to nurture talent at the very top, or to maximize performance across all members? I would think some combination of the two has the most value for both the highest ability players and society.

Really, it is not a smart girl's duty to defy stereotypes any more than it is her duty to fulfill traditional gender roles.

Re girls and math, I believe we've been through this before--but as a refresher course, and from memory (so I may be off slightly), girls now outperform boys, on average, on standardized math tests in elementary schools. There has also been a MASSIVE improvement in their performance on the SAT and on other measures with higher ceilings over the last 30 years--truly massive. The number of women majoring in math has skyrocketed as well.

On measures that assess the really high ends of math performance, I believe boys used to outscore girls 20 to 1, but now it is 4 to 1, and in some countries and populations, 2 to 1. International studies show that the # of girls who compete in extremely elite math competitions varies wildly by country and in fact, appears to correlate somewhat with the situation for women in that country.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: I don't completely reject the possibility that boys and girls (men and women) have some innate differences in verbal and spatial abilities, but we have NO ABILITY to know what those differences are yet due to entrenched sexism. There is NO REASON to assume that we have suddenly, just NOW, reached the point where sexism doesn't matter and all of that has fallen away to show us true natural abilities. People thought that in the '80s, when boys were outscoring girls 20 to 1.

+1. And let's not forget that having fun and enjoying the game is part of it as well.

It's sort of amusing to think of chess as a sport, but there are many similarities. Ideally, you learn to persist, to win and lose gracefully, and to practice and refine your skills to achieve more success. IMO, children's chess should be somewhat similar to children's sports. It should be open to and fun for anyone who is interested, with the opportunity for better/more interested players to compete at higher levels. It shouldn't give off the vibe that it's only for genius children or boys or math whizzes. It's been shown to have some really great benefits, in fact, so making it more accessible to all children seems to be a win-win to me (and continuing to position it as a "boy genius" thing is concerning).

Wasn't there a study recently posted to this forum indicating that the greater male variability in mathematics already existed in kindergarten?

Well, I will just share my perspective as a very talented, female Millenial. I left a good career track in a STEM profession to be a SAHM and volunteer. ...

... I would say that I logically weighed my options, acted according to my own set of priorities (which may or may not be influenced by my gender), and I'm happier than ever.

I have a lot of admiration and gratitude for the work that female activists have done in the past generations. But maybe the pendulum has swung in the other direction, in some areas. Really, it is not a smart girl's duty to defy stereotypes any more than it is her duty to fulfill traditional gender roles.

It's well known that a lot of women enter graduate schools, professional schools, or jobs knowing or considering that they're going to leave the workforce when they have children. Unfortunately, this practice is so common, it leads to hiring managers getting cynical, as in, "She'll quit as soon as she has a baby." So maybe they don't want to hire or promote other women of childbearing age because of fears of making a bad investment. And then there is the question of the grad and professional schools allotting scarce places to women who, ultimately, won't be really using their educations.

I don't think anyone has a duty to defy or fulfill traditional gender roles. People should make their own decisions based on their abilities on desires, not what someone else expects of them.

But...there's another side to the coin you've described. You make it sound so wonderful that you made a personal choice and you're so happy and it's all great. But what about the wider consequences?

It's well known that a lot of women enter graduate schools, professional schools, or jobs knowing or considering that they're going to leave the workforce when they have children. Unfortunately, this practice is so common, it leads to hiring managers getting cynical, as in, "She'll quit as soon as she has a baby." So maybe they don't want to hire or promote other women of childbearing age because of fears of making a bad investment. And then there is the question of the grad and professional schools allotting scarce places to women who, ultimately, won't be really using their educations.

Yes, I know that you can teach your kids and etc. etc. But that's not the same and it doesn't require a graduate or professional degree.

I understand that some people have NO CHOICE but to quit a job because something about the child demands it (e.g. health reasons). This is very different from deciding --- AFTER a lot of resources have been invested into you --- that you want to opt out. And I understand that people change their minds. But I think it's important for women in general to understand that every time a woman talks about how happy she is to have left the workforce after a lot of education, there are consequences for others. And the stereotypes we're talking about here are among them.

The last three men nominated to the Supreme Court have all been married and, among them, have seven children. The last three women — Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Harriet Miers (who withdrew) — have all been single and without children.

I strongly reject the idea that boys are inherently better at chess than girls. I cannot even believe any credence is given to that position in 2014.

The best hope for making progress against today’s gender inequality probably involves some combination of legal and cultural changes, which happens to be the same combination that beat back the old sexism. We’ll have to get beyond the Mommy Wars and instead create rewarding career paths even for parents — fathers, too — who take months or years off. We’ll have to get more creative about part-time and flexible work, too.

I'll also point out that the findings on girls' superior verbal skills haven't seemed to translate into most famous authors being women (and the world vociferously defending that as the natural order of things). Hmmm. It seems this "natural superiority" thing isn't destiny, eh?

I simply gave reasons why it is plausible based upon a widely accepted difference in spatial ability between boys and girls. And the response I have gotten back is that you think the studies are invalid. Possible, but wouldn't there be numerous recent studies pointing the other way by now?

No, for the simple reason that it's just not possible to control for all the cultural factors, so you can't do a study using a control group that does not exist.

However, we DO know that cultural attitudes about gender stereotypes have been changing over time, and we've seen that the performance gap changes over the same time period. We also know that cultural attitudes about gender stereotypes are different from culture to culture... and sure enough, we find that the performance gaps reflect those different attitudes as well.

So basically, we've proven beyond reasonable doubt that stereotypes play a significant role in gender differences in math, and in chess. We know that as attitudes skew closer to equality, the performance also skews closer to equality. That's a closed case.

All that's left now is to hypothesize about an imaginary culture in which no gender stereotypes exist, would some biological factor pre-select males for dominance at the very highest echelons of math and chess?

My hunch is: no.

The problem I have with deacongirl's statement is that, as educated people, these statements should not be off limits, but instead should be evaluated on the basis of evidence.

Your assertions are open to discussion; we're discussing them now. I fail to see how they're off limits. They have been evaluated on the basis of evidence, were found lacking, and the conversation is moving on to more fertile topics.

What cognitive tasks show sex differences?

Some spatial tasks such as mentally rotating 3D objects show the largest sex differences, favoring men by ∼0.5–1 standard deviations [26]. Much research has understandably focused on spatial tasks that show large sex differences, but this focus does not address how typical male advantages would be on a fuller range of spatial tasks. For instance, despite their presumed demands on spatial processing, geometry problems on mathematics tests typically show small-to-nonexistent sex differences 13 and 77.

Task characteristics influence spatial sex differences. For instance, male advantages in mental rotation are larger when the task involves 3D objects versus 2D objects [26] and has strict time limits versus no time limits [25]. However, other task differences are less well understood, such as why mentally rotating objects shows sex differences but mentally folding paper does not reliably (see Figure 1 in main text) 26 and 112. For instance, Harris and colleagues recently reviewed comparisons between mental rotation and mental folding, finding evidence for many similarities in the underlying cognitive processes [112]. That review paper speculated that the differences in male advantages may reflect task differences in requiring rigid versus non-rigid transformations of objects, but noted that current evidence is limited.

At least one spatial task (remembering object locations) moderately favors women [22]. This finding aligns with small to moderate female advantages on some memory tasks such as remembering object identities, faces, and lists of words and numbers 11, 18 and 22. Some other memory tasks show more mixed findings 17, 19, 20 and 21. For instance, when described as a test of geometry ability, a task involving recalling an abstract spatial diagram showed differences favoring boys (d = 0.51) [20]. However, when described as a test of drawing ability, the task showed differences favoring girls (d = 0.50). This study (n = 199) [20] replicated two earlier studies [19].

Sex differences in average mathematics test performance tend to be small to nonexistent 13, 16 and 77, although boys outnumber girls among high performers (e.g., top 1% or higher) in most but not all nations 9, 10, 16 and 78. These differences often do not reliably differ by task characteristics (e.g., geometry versus non-geometry problems), although girls sometimes slightly outperform boys on problems requiring algebraic solutions or short-answer responses 13 and 77. These small female advantages for algebra and short-answer problems align with findings regarding verbal tasks. For instance, girls outperform boys in reading across the globe (∼0.2–0.6 standard deviations) 11, 16 and 79. These female advantages are larger among lower-performing students 16 and 79 and are even larger for writing tasks [11].

Research conducted in the 1970s to 1980s suggested an alarming finding that boys outnumber girls 13 to 1 among American students with exceptional mathematics talent [9]. However, this tail ratio has dropped to about 2–4 to 1 in recent years, according to both self-selected [9] and nationally representative samples [10]. Sex differences in average mathematics test performance also decreased during the 1970s to 1980s 11 and 12 and have since remained small to negligible 10 and 13.These changes over time have led some scholars to conclude that cognitive sex differences are disappearing. However, the data indicate nuanced trends. For instance, the overrepresentation of males among high mathematics performers decreased during the 1980s, but has not been decreasing since the 1990s 9 and 10. Since at least 1990, girls have earned higher mathematics grades by approximately 0.1–0.2 Grade Point Average (GPA) points [14]. Other data also indicate complex findings. Earlier meta-analytic evidence suggested few sex differences in verbal abilities [15], but recent analyses of large-scale international assessments call for reexamination of this claim. In an analysis of 1.5 million children's reading achievements, girls outperformed boys in all 75 nations in all testing administrations (in total, 213 independent samples) [16]. These sex differences were moderately large in 55% of cases (0.36 ≤ d < 0.65) and may be increasing over time. Small-to-moderate female advantages are also consistently found for some but not all memory tasks ( Box 2) 11, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21 and 22. Male advantages are found on some but not all spatial tasks ( Figure 1) 22, 23, 24, 25 and 26; cross-temporal trends on spatial tasks are mixed

Abstract

Using contemporary data from the U.S. and other nations, we address 3 questions: Do gender differences in mathematics performance exist in the general population? Do gender differences exist among the mathematically talented? Do females exist who possess profound mathematical talent? In regard to the first question, contemporary data indicate that girls in the U.S. have reached parity with boys in mathematics performance, a pattern that is found in some other nations as well. Focusing on the second question, studies find more males than females scoring above the 95th or 99th percentile, but this gender gap has significantly narrowed over time in the U.S. and is not found among some ethnic groups and in some nations. Furthermore, data from several studies indicate that greater male variability with respect to mathematics is not ubiquitous. Rather, its presence correlates with several measures of gender inequality. Thus, it is largely an artifact of changeable sociocultural factors, not immutable, innate biological differences between the sexes. Responding to the third question, we document the existence of females who possess profound mathematical talent. Finally, we review mounting evidence that both the magnitude of mean math gender differences and the frequency of identification of gifted and profoundly gifted females significantly correlate with sociocultural factors, including measures of gender equality across nations.

Two recent studies directly address the question of whether greater male variability in mathematics is a ubiquitous phenomenon. Machin and Pekkarinen (19) reported that the M:F VR in mathematics was significantly >1.00 at the P < 0.05 level among 15-year-old students in 34 of 40 countries participating in the 2003 PISA and among 13-year-old students in 33 of 50 countries participating in the 2003 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS). However, these data also indicated that the math VR was significantly less than or insignificantly different from 1.00 for some of the countries that participated in these assessments (e.g., Table 2), a finding inconsistent with the Greater Male Variability Hypothesis

...I find it troubling that their definition of mathematically talented is 95th percentile (or even 99th percentile). Dr. Stanley's work focused on children who were really at the extreme tail (even well beyond the 99.9 subtest standard used by Davidson). At the nationally competitive level, that's who we are dealing with.

Even my DD, who is not mathematically talented, is consistently at above 99th percentile. She is just not at the extreme like her brother or even her mother.

Performance on a standardized test or in a math competition seems like a narrow definition of math talent to me. Both of these things require speed; what about people who prefer to approach problems s-l-o-w-l-y and consider many different aspects of an idea?

Many things in our society (including chess competitions, tenure decisions, and so) reward speed (e.g. how fast can you make your next move?? How many publications can you get out in the next 5 years??). IMO, when we fail to let people move slowly, we fail as a society in a very important area.

Even my DD, who is not mathematically talented, is consistently at above 99th percentile. She is just not at the extreme like her brother or even her mother.

No, for the simple reason that it's just not possible to control for all the cultural factors, so you can't do a study using a control group that does not exist.

However, we DO know that cultural attitudes about gender stereotypes have been changing over time, and we've seen that the performance gap changes over the same time period. We also know that cultural attitudes about gender stereotypes are different from culture to culture... and sure enough, we find that the performance gaps reflect those different attitudes as well.

So basically, we've proven beyond reasonable doubt that stereotypes play a significant role in gender differences in math, and in chess. We know that as attitudes skew closer to equality, the performance also skews closer to equality. That's a closed case.

All that's left now is to hypothesize about an imaginary culture in which no gender stereotypes exist, would some biological factor pre-select males for dominance at the very highest echelons of math and chess?

My hunch is: no.

Am I the only one who found it amusing that "not mathematically talented" and "above 99th percentile" were in the same sentence?

Am I the only one who found it amusing that "not mathematically talented" and "above 99th percentile" were in the same sentence?

No-- I also found it amusing that "talented" was equated to "autodidactic" in the same post.

I was not aware that those things were necessarily synonymous.

... maybe one can only be truly autodidactic in a cave somewhere, alone with nothing but one's own thoughts, a stick and dirt to write in...

I venture a guess that most of the kids who play chess-- even at an elite level-- do so after some instruction on the subject (shocking, I know).

Priceless!

Every one of the talented chess players I know has one or more elite coaches.

There is one very reliable sign to how much potential and how strong a young chess player is or is going to be, and it’s probably not what most people would think.

It’s not how quickly a student solves tactics or sees combinations (although these two things always seem to be correlated with the main point of this article). It’s not the student’s positional understanding. It’s not even how much they claim to study chess.

Instead it is “How likely is this student to recognize a famous game/position and know the players involved?”

Do they know that it’s Capablanca vs Botvinnik in the AVRO tournament or Fischer vs Petrosian or Karpov vs Unzicker?

I think that if you gave a quiz of 100 famous chess positions and simply asked children “Who was playing this game?”, and didn’t ask what moves should be played or anything chess related other than historical/biographical information, the players who performed the best at this test would end up being the strongest players ten years later.

DS5 has not had a coach and it's been driving the coaches at chess club berserk. He is now being given free private lessons (which is a matter of mild concern for DH and me, in that I am not sure if we should worry that we are not paying for this and other families are).

Glad to be of service. Definitions and standards make a difference. I don't equate high IQ and/or high achievement with math talent. In my experience, it is possible to be both without having math talent and perhaps more controversial, to be without neither (at least not super high) and yet have a certain math talent....Talent is not high IQ or high achievement on standardized tests.

Bostonian, I'm somewhat unclear on what your comment has to do with my quote.

Ah-- my misunderstanding, evidently.

Surely there is something less derisive than "spoon-feeding" to describe the process of learning in a student who requires-- or merely prefers-- some instruction, though?

Perhaps I just see this as a continuum, with spoon-feeding at one end and total autodidactism at the other. Most of what we call "autodidactic" wouldn't have even been possible a generation ago, given the lack of opportunity and access yesterday's students had in comparison to Gen Z.

After all, perhaps TRULY "talented" individuals don't require anything but their own discovery and cognitive ability to achieve greatness... but it seems a bit much to expect even quite precocious individuals to, say, ignore Newton's work in favor of doing all of their own derivations and inventing notation themselves. Is it being needy to use a textbook to learn from those who have already figured things out? If a textbook is okay, what about a YouTube video? Surely one's own daily environment being enriched or not counts in some way... maybe one can only be truly autodidactic in a cave somewhere, alone with nothing but one's own thoughts, a stick and dirt to write in...

Perhaps I just believe that there's something in between because that seems to be the child that I have. Also-- I suspect that because I see all of the inputs (as most parents with 'schooled' students do not), that I can say quite confidently that she requires NOTHING like spoon-feeding, but she could soar a LOT higher than she does if she weren't being expected to learn in a relative instructional vacuum. She really does NOT get instruction from anywhere but a few power-point slides and her textbook. IMO, it shows.

Most here probably WOULD consider her an autodidact if they knew how little instructional input there is for her. I don't consider her an autodidact, because she does BETTER (about 30-40% better, IMO-- raising herself from "highly proficient" to "mastery") with fairly minimal (an hour or two a week) of human instruction.

I think that it significantly and unfairly maligns such students to derisively claim that they need spoon-feeding or hand-holding, or any other patronizing terminology.

I venture a guess that most of the kids who play chess-- even at an elite level-- do so after some instruction on the subject (shocking, I know).

In fact, I'd be willing to guess that most of the kids here who play chess get more CHESS instruction weekly than my DD gets math instruction-- in both of her college-level (dual enrollment) math courses.

So-- does she need "spoon-feeding"? Is this evidence that she lacks math talent? I'd say not. Perhaps she lacks DRIVE in the domain, and this might explain why she is not autodidactic there to the extent that some students are. But her raw ability is a different matter.

Re chess coaches and children, I think this is one of these things that's changed with time, much as youth sports have changed and become more intense and competitive with time. Youth chess is also much more popular today than it once was, I believe.

But I'm sure there are at least some kids who do relatively well without coaches, perhaps because their school club or team is very intensive or they study a lot on their own.

I think this is probably less appropriate nowadays with the many competitive kids' tournaments available (in some areas), though I couldn't say for sure.

While I don't think one need be an autodidact to possess talent in a field, I do understand what Quantum is getting at. Of my two children, only DD10 has asked deep questions related to math and tried to concoct her own "tricks" and theories regarding math. She clearly THINKS about math. At 3 or 4, she came to us with the observation that some number have "middles" and some do not, and one could classify them that way, and this seemed important. (She had figured out even and odd.)

She is also good at calculation and a strong math student, though not actually highly outstanding. Math is NOT her favorite subject. Yet it's this interest in *thinking* about math which still makes me think that there may be some latent math spark that will emerge in later grades.

DS5, in contrast, has never come to us with any such mathematical musings. He is certainly ahead in math, but I don't see any interest in math concepts or ideas. He knows facts and operations about as well as DD did at this age, but I would be surprised if math ever was a topic of great interest. Yet he is the one with the unusual chess gift.

It's not that DD tends autodidactic and DS does not. They both tend autodidactic.

This would seem to be a flaw in the concept of IQ.

By definition, if you have talent in math, you should have a "high IQ".

If you have actualized a talent in math, by definition, you had the potential to actualize the talent, which ostensibly an IQ test would be able to measure.

So, the problem lies with the IQ test, not with the empirical reality of high achievement in an intellectual domain.

By the way, I personally don't think math talent is 100% correlated with chess talent. At least, that has not been my experience or observation. Of course, I dont have any chess talent so I am not qualify to disect it. I'll leave that to someone like Bostonian who actually knows what he is talking about.

I agree with you that the correlation is not perfect. DS, DD, and I are all strong in math, but only DS is strong in chess. I am average in chess and DD never showed skill in the game.