Is it nature (heredity) or nurture (upbringing) that determines one's intelligence? Behavioural scientists are grappling with this conundrum, even today.

Most people will have occasionally read in the newspaper of exceptionally gifted children. From time to time, people may privately hear of a gifted child, although it is rare to meet one.

Giftedness is a phenomenon of extraordinary perception, accompanied by extraordinary ability for abstract and comprehensive thinking, and usually (though not always) for expression. Gifted children not only have these extraordinary thinking abilities, they develop them earlier and at a faster rate. They start by perceiving the world in their own way and become inspired by their own ways of thinking and comprehending.

Some special abilities, such as musical talent, lend themselves to impressive display. Number prodigies can also astonish. Mathematicians, questioned about childhood interest in calculation, frequently tell of games played endlessly, such as walking home from school a new way to find a house the number of which is the square root of their own house number. They often evolve their own logarithmic tables before they know of a printed one, thus facilitating very complex unwritten calculations.

Naturally, most parents would like a checklist of signs of high ability to work their way through, so that they could decide for themselves whether they had such a child. There are, however, two reasons why this does not seem to be the best approach for them.

Only someone who has made a deep study of child psychology, and specifically of the psychology of children notably above average, can decide which parameters are most likely to suggest high ability. As soon as you get a coming-together of abilities, the matter becomes one of intuitive assessment of relationships, and here the expert is more reliable than the amateur.

Secondly, some of the supposedly most reliable signs, like alertness and short hours of sleep, can be quite misleading. Parents tend to imagine their link to some sort of giftedness in their child when they observe such signs. If parents suspect that they have a supernormal child, they should seek objective assessment or consult a specialist.

It is with these in mind that Mensa (www.mensa.org) was founded in 1945 following a broadcast by Professor Sir Cyril Burt. The opportunity for membership of Mensa is attained by passing certain tests of intelligence intended to give objective evidence of an individual being in the intellectual top two percent of the population; the purpose is to study problems and to offer suggestions for the benefit of all. There is a Young Mensa, but only for the 16-20 age group.

Typically, gifted children were desperately bored and getting into mischief in school. At home, they were sleeping much less than was normal for their age. They passed their time in bed reading at length on subjects about which they could not possibly have practical experience, such as astronomy, physics, and philosophy.

A gifted child is instinctively motivated. He does not like to conform. If pushed, he may oblige, but in his own modified way. Gifted children know they are different, and they generally like themselves as they are, although as a measure of prudence, they keep such feelings to themselves.

Gifted children also ask more questions than you can answer, have obsessive hobbies, are unstimulated by the school curriculum, react intensely to everything, hold perfectionist standards for themselves, want to know the meaning of life when other children only want to know how to tie their shoe-laces, and keep their bedrooms in a condition you can never show company.

The majority of the parents of the gifted perceived their children as having an excellent memory, which enabled them to be fast learners. Most parents noticed an extensive vocabulary in their children even before they were in school. A good example is a five-year-old who prefaced his sentences with, "Well, apparently..."

The question of whether we can recognise gifted children at an early age is embedded in a larger issue: how much of a child's giftedness is attributable to nature and how much to nurture. It is at times extremely difficult to distinguish when such gifts are due to heredity and when to environment. For example, one girl of some mathematical ability had two parents who were professor of mathematics, so it is fairly safe to assume that her ability was inherited. But the fact that both parents, when young, had loved to play mathematical games, meant that they now loved to re-play some of these games with their daughter, so that would be an environmental influence.

Though the casual effect of heredity and of environment is not easy to disentangle, it is safest to think of heredity and environment as co-parents of intelligence. Despite Madison Avenue, you just can't create a prodigy from scratch like Yuppie pasta.

Not every gifted child has to grow up to be a world-beater or moulder of the destiny of mankind (such as the likes of John Connor in "Terminator 2"). Bringing up an ever-developing, self-directed person who feels good about himself or herself, who is productive and competent in his or her work and personal relationship, and who is able to enjoy a full and rich life is just as important.

Friday, March 25, 2005