Lessons from a 45-year Study of Super-Smart Children

  SMPY researchers say that even modest interventions—for example, access to challenging material such as college-level Advanced Placement courses—have a demonstrable effect. Among students with high ability, those who were given a richer density of advanced precollegiate educational opportunities in STEM went on to publish more academic papers, earn more patents and pursue higher-level careers than their equally smart peers who didn't have these opportunities.

  Despite SMPY's many insights, researchers still have an incomplete picture of giftedness and achievement. “We don't know why, even at the high end, some people will do well and others won't,” says Douglas Detterman, a psychologist who studies cognitive ability at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. “Intelligence won't account for all the differences between people; motivation, personality factors, how hard you work and other things are important.”

Actually the claim is the other way around - that the people at the top got there through focused effort of the right kind.

Finding "gifted" children does not contradict this. Nobody pops out of the womb a math genius.

Gifted children are "gifted" with a laser focus on the unusual things that they find fun - math, music, what-have-you. They spend countless hours playing with numbers or with music, while little Johnny is playing with a ball.

I was one of these kids, I played with geometric objects, with music, etc. Sure I was weird sometimes. I didn't have anybody to share my interests with.

Anyway, point is, when people point to "gifted" talent, this is just another cop-out. They don't have an explanation. They are appealing to everybody's shared sense of magical outcomes.

But it boils down to the hours that kids put into their interests.