The Genius in All of Us: New Insights Into Genetics, Talent, and IQ (40 page)

While all these statements are logically plausible, they are each challenged by the evidence, by common sense, and by their own extreme unidirectionality. To declare with confidence that intrinsic motivation is inborn is to blatantly ignore early human psychology. While it’s clear that biology contributes to personality, there’s every evidence that it is not the sole determinant. To suggest that childhood independence could be caused wholly by the actions of a child is absurd. To suggest that parents’ high expectations and modeling of hard work and high achievement could possibly have zero effect on a child because that child has simply inherited the “gift” of motivation and talent from their parents is to embrace a genetic determinism even stronger than that of Galton. And finally, to say it is “likely” that the child-centeredness of families with precocious children begins wholly after the discovery of an exceptional ability is to ignore the variety of parenting styles the world around.

    
“Necessary but not sufficient” became a common reaction to Ericsson as many professionals clung to the unsustainable notion of innate gifts
:
For example, John Cloud, “Is Genius Born or Can It Be Learned?”
Time
, February 13, 2009.

    
We also know for sure that early musical exposure can work the same way
.

Abrams, Michael. “The Biology of … Perfect Pitch: Can Your Child Learn Some of Mozart’s Magic?”
Discover
, December 1, 2001.

Dalla Bella, Simone, Jean-François Giguère, and Isabelle Peretz. “Singing proficiency in the general population.”
Journal of the Acoustical Society of America
1212 (February 2007): 1182–89.

Deutsch, Diana. “Tone Language Speakers Possess Absolute Pitch.” Presentation at the 138th meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, November 4, 1999.

Dingfelder, S. “Most people show elements of absolute pitch.”
Monitor on Psychology
36, no. 2 (February 2005): 33.

Kalmus, H., and D. B. Fry. “On tune deafness (dysmelodia): frequency, development, genetics and musical background.”
Annals of Human Genetics
43, no. 4 (May 1980): 369–82.

Lee, Karen. “An Overview of Absolute Pitch.” Published online at
https://web space.utexas.edu/kal463/www/abspitch.html
, November 16, 2005.

    
Imperceptibly, like water evaporating into a rain cloud, tiny events pave the way for development in one direction or another
.

   The sudden emergence may sometimes appear to happen, but it doesn’t really happen. “We found no rigorous evidence for the sudden emergence of superior abilities in both prodigies and gifted students,” reports Ericsson. (Ericsson et al., “Giftedness and evidence for reproducibly superior performance,” p. 34.)

    
For example, Winner points out that mathematically and musically “gifted” individuals tend to use both lobes of the brain for tasks usually dominated by the left hemisphere in individuals with normal abilities
.

Winner’s citations:

Gordon, H. W. “Hemisphere asymmetry in the perception of musical chords.”
Cortex
6 (1970): 387–98.

Gordon, H. W. “Left-hemisphere dominance of rhythmic elements in dichotically presented melodies.”
Cortex
14 (1978): 58–70.

Gordon, H. W. “Degree of ear asymmetry for perception of dichotic chords and for illusory chord localization in musicians of different levels of competence.”
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Perception and Performance
6 (1980): 516–27.

Hassler, M., and N. Birbaumer. “Handedness, musical attributes, and dichaptic and dichotic performance in adolescents: a longitudinal study.”
Developmental Neuropsychology
4, no. 2 (1988): 129–45.

O’Boyle, M. W., H. S. Gill, C. P. Benbow, and J. E. Alexander. “Concurrent finger-tapping in mathematically gifted males: evidence for enhanced right hemisphere involvement during linguistic processing.”
Cortex
30 (1994): 519–26.

    
artists, inventors, and musicians tend to have a higher proportion of language disorders
.

Winner’s citations:

Winner, E., and M. Casey. “Cognitive Profiles of Artists.” In
Emerging Visions: Contemporary Approaches to the Aesthetic Process
, edited by G. Cupchik and J. Laszlo. Cambridge University Press, 1993.

Winner, E., M. Casey, D. DaSilva, and R. Hayes. “Spatial abilities and reading deficits in visual art students.”
Empirical Studies of the Arts
9, no. 1 (1991): 51–63.

Colangelo, N., S. Assouline, B. Kerr, R. Huesman, and D. Johnson. “Mechanical Inventiveness: A Three-Phase Study.” In
The Origins and Development of High Ability
, edited by G. R. Bock and K. Ackrill. Wiley, 1993, pp. 106–74.

Hassler, M. “Functional cerebral asymmetric and cognitive abilities in musicians, painters, and controls.”
Brain and Cognition
13 (1990): 1–17.

    
Consider that “genetics” actually means “genetic expression,” and that the uterine environment and after-birth events are both highly developmental
.

   Which is not the same as saying “under your control.”

    
He is one of an estimated one hundred living prodigious savants who have both severe impairments and extraordinary abilities
:
Treffert, “Savant Syndrome.”

From the “Savant Syndrome” FAQ page:

How common is savant syndrome?

Approximately one in ten (10%) of persons with autistic disorder have some savant skills. In other forms of development disability, mental retardation or brain injury, savant skills occur in less than 1% of such persons (approximately 1:2000 in persons with mental retardation). Since these other forms of mental disability are much more common than autistic disorder however, it turns out that approximately 50% of persons with savant syndrome have autistic disorder, and the other 50% have some other form of developmental disability, mental retardation or brain injury or disease. Thus not all savants are autistic, and not all autistic persons are savants.

What is the range of savant skills?

Savant skills exist over a spectrum of abilities. The most common savant abilities are called splinter skills. These include behaviors such as obsessive preoccupation with, and memorization of, music and sports trivia, license plate numbers, maps, historical facts, or obscure items such as vacuum cleaner motor sounds, for example. Talented savants are those persons in whom musical, artistic, mathematical or other special skills are more prominent and highly honed, usually within an area of single expertise, and are very conspicuous when viewed against their overall handicap. The term prodigious savant is reserved for those very rare persons in this already uncommon condition where the special skill or ability is so outstanding that it would be spectacular even if it were to occur in a non-handicapped person. There are probably fewer than 100 prodigious savants living worldwide at the present time who would meet this high threshold of special skill.

    
The group also includes Daniel Tammet
:
Treffert and Wallace, “Islands of Genius.”

    
He estimates that approximately one in ten persons with autism has some savant skills
:
See excerpts from the “Savant Syndrome” FAQ, above.

    
The syndrome, he explains, occurs when the brain’s left hemisphere is severely damaged, inviting the right hemisphere (which is responsible for things like music and art) to compensate heavily for the loss
.

Niki Denison writes:

In trying to determine what causes savant syndrome, scientists turn to an increasing body of evidence that shows that when a particular part of the brain is thrown out of commission, another part attempts to compensate. Many have come to believe that in savant syndrome, the left hemisphere of the brain is damaged, so the brain adapts by drawing more heavily on the right hemisphere, which is responsible for creativity and skills in things like art and music. The left hemisphere, which is the home of language, comprehension, and logical, sequential thinking, is more vulnerable to harmful prenatal influences because it develops later and more slowly than the right hemisphere.

One theory holds that an excess of circulating testosterone can impair left-hemisphere development, causing nerve cells to migrate to the right hemisphere and overdevelop that part of the brain. Because testosterone reaches very high levels in male fetuses, this could explain why savant syndrome is six times more common in boys than in girls. (Denison, “The Rain Man in All of Us,” p. 30.)

   Kim Peek, the human calculator who inspired the Dustin Hoffman character in
Rain Man
, is missing the corpus callosum in his brain—the portion of the brain that allows the left and right sides of the brain to talk to each other easily.

    
“In the case of the prodigious savant, it appears to me, there is a marvelous coalescence of idiosyncratic brain circuitry [combined with] obsessive traits of concentration & repetition and tremendous encouragement & reinforcement from family, caretakers and teachers
.
Does some of that same possibility, a little Rain Man as it were, perhaps reside within each of us? I think that it does”: Treffert, “Is There a Little ‘Rain Man’ in Each of Us?”

More from Treffert:

The idea that some savant capabilities—a little Rain Man—might reside in each of us rises from several observations. First, there have been instances reported of previously non-disabled, “normal” persons in whom some previously
latent savant skills emerged following a head injury, a phenomenon called “acquired” savant syndrome. Second, Dr. Bruce Miller’s work, as described in detail elsewhere on this site, documents 12 cases of elderly persons, previously non-disabled, with no extraordinary savant skills, whose savant abilities newly emerged, sometimes at a prodigious level, after a particular type of dementia—fronto-temporal dementia—began and progressed. Thirdly, some procedures such as hypnosis or sodium amytal interviews in non-disabled persons, and brain surface electrode exploration during certain types of neurosurgical procedures, provide evidence that a huge reservoir of memories lies dormant, and non-accessed, in each of us. Fourth, the images and memories that surface, often to our surprise, during some dreams, also tap that huge store of buried memories beyond that available in our everyday waking state. Finally, often as we relax or “tune out” other distractions, sometime after “retirement” for example, some previously hidden, latent interests, talents or abilities quite suddenly, and surprisingly, emerge. Sometimes that emergence is actually a re-kindling of some earlier childhood abilities, such as art, for whatever reason set aside with maturation and “growing up.” (Treffert, “Savant Syndrome.”)

Diane Powell adds:

Our model of savant abilities suggests that our brains operate at two levels, the quantum and the classical. These two levels are no more exclusionary than classical (or Newtonian) physics and quantum mechanics. One major difference between them is that the forces in classical physics operate locally, whereas forces in quantum physics operate nonlocally. Both types of forces operate in our brains, which is why our brains can process consciousness both locally and nonlocally. Some people have conditions such as autism that shift the balance between local and nonlocal processes by knocking out the functioning of the neocortex. The rest of us can decrease this classical dominance by such mind-quieting practices as meditation. Hence, as we become more consciously aware or awake, we use nonlocal processes more and more. Along the way, we will progressively see the world less abstractly. We will see it more as it really is. (Powell, “We Are All Savants,” p. 17.)