HUMAN INTELLIGENCE 287individual humans can develop within a specifi c domain when commit-
ted to it. Noteworthy is the remarkable speed of learning in all human
children as they acquire the highly complex human language at a very
early age.
However, what many psychologists and others get most excited about
is the unusual extent of development of par tic u lar children in par tic u lar
domains. Such individuals thereby become referred to as “gift ed.” Again
the subject becomes shrouded in a mystique with attributions of (entirely
unproven) “ge ne tic” superiority. How inert chemical strings of DNA can
come to enhance development in, say, mathe matics or music is never
explained.
Nevertheless, for parents who generally want such distinction for their
off spring, this can be an emotive issue. Th at makes them more gullible to
“messages” from scientists and their implications. So a letter in New
Scientist looked forward to the day when “a screening test for sperm might
one day be used to screen for ge ne tic markers, thereby at least increasing
our chances of producing brilliant off spring.” And, in a more popu lar
piece for parents, Linda Gottfriedson says, “Gift ed children unmask the
fi ction that we are all born equally intelligent.... Mother Nature is no
egalitarian; she grants gift s and talents in diff ering amount.”^31
Some studies over the past century have tried to prove this general idea
by following up groups of gift ed children in adulthood. Indeed, the IQ
test designer Lewis Terman did that with a large sample of high- IQ indi-
viduals. Of course, the studies are fatally designed, because the children
mostly continue to enjoy the favorable social circumstances they started
with.
Not surprisingly, then, most did quite well in later life. But few achieved
national recognition in their fi eld of choice. In a review in 2006, Joan
Freeman points out how Lewis Terman’s famous “geniuses” enjoyed well
above the population norms of childhood privilege and circumstance. In
their seventies and eighties, however, they were no more successful in
adulthood than if they had been randomly selected from children of the
same socioeconomic backgrounds— regardless of their IQ scores. Simi-
lar results have emerged from more recent studies.^32
Governments are also snared by the mystique, attributing national
economic success at least partly to such individuals. Th at is why they fund
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