The Child and his Behavior. A. R. Luria

Assessing Giftedness, and the Problem of Cultural Development

The measurement and assessment of giftedness have recently become a matter of great practical importance. Over the past few decades, the notion of quantifying a child’s giftedness, which was put forward in the United States and, France towards the end of the nineteenth century, has assumed concrete forms, and now we not only have a number of developed systems of tests, but have been successfully using them in schools, clinics and industry. The basic idea behind contemporary tests for the study of giftedness maybe summarized as follows: if the test subject is given a series of problems, each involving activity connected to a certain psychological function, and if those problems are then arranged in order of increasing difficulty, it is to be expected that a person who is more gifted in a certain function will be able to solve a greater number of those problems, or to solve them more successfully. This makes it possible to express the level of giftedness in certain relative figures. Such is the basis for all tests of giftedness. though individual systems may differ in their details and in the devices whereby they implement this basic idea.

For example, Professor Rossolimo’s well-known “psychological profile” system studies the level of development of individual, functions (attention, memory, will, speed of understanding, etc.), expressing that level in conventional units, in terms of the number of problems solved. The result of this study is a “psychological profile” indicating the level of each individual function. Another well-known system of tests, the Binet system, seeks to provide a summary assessment of the level of development of children at certain ages. Noting that children of different ages are by no means able to handle every single problem, Binet selected a number of empirical series of tests, each of which could be easily solved by a normal child of a given age. Such series of problems were elaborated for children aged three, four and five, etc. If a child of a given age were retarded he would usually not solve all the problems for his age; a well-developed gifted child, on the other hand, in addition to problems set for hi s age, could also solve those of the next age group. The degree of his development or retardation was thus calculated empirically.

Nonetheless, on closer examination, the basically sound and correct idea of measuring giftedness by means of tests proves to be quite complex. Which qualities should be tested in the various giftedness tests? What precisely is giftedness, and what is that term normally understood to mean? Closer scrutiny of the various systems of tests for giftedness shows that they often test entirely different functions, taken from quite different spheres. We may say that almost all contemporary tests for giftedness study either the state of innate psycho-physiological functions, or something totally different – the development of skills and the amount of information possessed by the individual. It may be assumed that the first cycle of processes is only very slightly subject to development, if at all; for that reason it is often important to tests a person’s natural memory, his vision and hearing, and the speed of his movements, etc. On the other hand, of course, the amount of information a person possesses is highly variable, and is itself the result of a varying wealth of experience, and of contact of varying success and duration with the environment. If we examine data obtained, for example, from the test research done by Binet, we have to acknowledge that it consists of very heterogeneous material, and that behind the aggregate figure supposedly expressing the child’s intellectual age there lies an undifferentiated combination of assessed natural qualities and knowledge obtained in school. One wonders, in fact, whether the ability to name monetary symbols, to list the months in order, or to detect rhythm in words is really evidence of giftedness in the child. Such data tells us less about a child’s giftedness than, about information acquired in school, the volume of knowledge and vocabulary absorbed by the child, etc. Of course all of, this may be encompassed by the widely understood meaning of giftedness, though it. fails by far to exhaust that concept. We know of types and instances of giftedness that are not accompanied by a large volume of knowledge. Besides the wealth of information absorbed by a child, one would do well also to study a number of other traits not directly related to the child’s knowledge, but playing an important role in his cultural development.

On the other hand, we think that a study of giftedness limited to the individual’s natural, innate qualities would be far from complete. Can we, without analysis, reject the intellectual work of a person with a naturally very poor memory? Can we label him as ungifted if, together with a naturally poor memory, he also scores poorly on other natural functions speed of reaction, preciseness of movements, attention, etc? Such a conclusion on our part would be quite wrong. We should not forget that unquestionably gifted people often have poor natural endowments, and that a natural shortcoming does not remain a permanent gaping hole, but that it can be filled in, and offset by certain artificial devices acquired over a person’s lifetime. As we have shown above, with a certain degree of “cultural giftedness” a person with a poor memory may develop an excellent ability to use it, whereas in another instance good natural gifts may remain inert.

By noting the condition of a person’s innate qualities we are merely defining his “point of departure” which, through different kinds of cultural development, may yield unequal results. What exactly is that cultural development and how can one proceed to establish and assess it by means of certain psychological tests? From all of the foregoing our answer to that question is now self-evident. We believe that the degree of cultural development expresses itself not only in acquired knowledge, but also in a per son’s ability to use the objects of the external world, and primarily in his ability to make rational use of his own psychological processes. Culture and the environment do more than merely transmit knowledge to a person: they alter him, transforming the very structure of his psychological processes, elaborating within him certain devices whereby he may use his own capabilities. Cultural giftedness occurs primarily when a person with poor or average natural gifts, makes rational use of those gifts, to attain results that another, culturally undeveloped person could attain only with the help of much more powerful natural gifts. The ability to master one’s own natural wealth, and the elaboration and application of the best devices for using that wealth these are the very essence of cultural giftedness.

There is no need to think that cultural giftedness is a single, constant and static concept. It may manifest itself in quite different ways, and giftedness in one field does not necessarily imply giftedness in another. A musician who has developed exceptional cultural activity in one sphere may be wholly lacking in the gifts that we expect to find in a scientist, while a person with great practical gifts possesses quite a different set of qualities. Instead of the abstract and fairly meaningless term “general giftedness” the notion. of a whole range of special “giftednesses” is now being put forward.

In all of these, however, there is one common element. The maximum ability to use one’s natural gifts, the elaboration of increasing numbers of devices, external and internal, simple and complex, which make a natural process mediate, artificial and cultural. The general sense of the notion of cultural giftedness lies precisely in the abundance and dynamism of such devices.

This concept naturally presupposes a dynamic phenomenon, acquired through living contact with the social environment; these psychological formations are the result of social influence on man, and are the representative of the external cultural environment in the life of the organism. Everyone has them; but, depending on each person’s history and the different plasticity of one’s original constitutional gifts, they may be highly developed in some, and poor or merely embryonic in others. The task of the psychologist is to study them with sufficient accuracy and to determine the coefficient of such “cultural development” in each individual studied. The degree of one’s natural predispositions, the state of neuro-psychic activity in terms of age, the entire basis of neuro-dynamics, and then the stage and the structure of cultural processes, the extent of one’s information and wealth of knowledge – this is what a program for the study of giftedness should comprise.

It is safe to say that in the near future the experimental psychological research now being developed will be able to give us both ready systems of tests of cultural development, and those standards which may be deemed characteristic of the cultural development of children of different ages, and biological and social groups.

The study, together with innate qualities, of those forms of neuro-psychic activity attributable to the cultural influence of the social environment will enable us to better understand the children in our kindergartens and schools, to form a more accurate judgment of the nature of their development, and through a rational cultural influence to propel their development ever further ahead.