Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Outliers, Tiger Moms, and Nature

I'd put the balance with my own five-year-old kid close to 50% nature, 50% nurture. That's a complete guess, of course. I believe strongly that nurture plays a much larger role than many here assign to it.

Of course, it's obvious to me that some high levels of certain skills can't be attained by a person with any amount of training; I often label these "savant-type talents". For memory, this would include such things as memorizing the entire London skyline at a glance (Stephen Wiltshire), memorizing whole pages of the phone book at a glance (John von Neumann), etc.

I think, though, that there are many kinds of skills where savant-type skills would not be possible, or would not be highly relevant, only giving one a sort of boost. I don't think that being a numeric savant who can calculate pi to any arbitrary place in one's head, for example, really gives one much of a boost in higher math reasoning ability, nor would memorizing math textbooks at a glance. Memory of course is a special area that can increase one's ability on a myriad of tasks, but I suspect that for a great many tasks one could be well enough off with the type of memory enhancements that come with practice that a savant's memory would again not be the prime determining factor in maximum achievement potential. For other tasks (winning Jeopardy, drawing things precisely from memory, etc.) a savant-type memory might help quite a bit.

I remain convinced that for most types of skills that really matter to the human race (research etc.), a person with fairly average biological attributes could be trained to the level of being a "genius" as that term is generally used by the public-- primarily a person who is observed to make great discoveries, or otherwise change the world in a significant way. I believe you can train someone into having an indomitable spirit, incredible focus, amazing problem-solving abilities, the whole nine yards. Of course, a John von Neumann type, trained "perfectly", would quite likely be ahead of the average-starting-point person in a number of ways due to her or his gifts.