Developing Talent Across the Lifespan

Book excerpt: This volume presents fascinating new theoretical perspectives and empirical findings on the life-span development of talent. It shows how talents are the result of the acquisition of a sequence of skills and how the acquisition of these skills is facilitated by changes in the individual's environment. It explores to what degree the development of high intelligence or achievement is similar to the development of specific domains such as personality, morality, painting, musical performance, or professional skills. It questions whether the development of talent observed for specific groups is similar to individual cases and how the different numbers of highly talented women and men in several domains are to be explained.