A Differentiated Model of Giftedness and Talent

by Professor Francoys Gagné

My model proposes a clear distinction between giftedness and talent. In it the term giftedness designates the possession and use of untrained and spontaneously expressed natural abilities (called aptitudes or gifts), in at least one ability domain, to a degree that places a child at least among the top 15% of his or her age peers. By contrast, the term talent designates the superior mastery of systematically developed abilities (or skills) and knowledge in at least one field of human activity to a degree that places a child's achievement within at least the upper 15% of age-peers who are active in that field or fields.

The Gagné model proposes five aptitude domains (see diagram below): intellectual, creative, socioaffective, sensorimotor and "others" (eg. extrasensory perception). These natural abilities, which have a clear genetic substratum, can be observed in every task children are confronted with in the course of their schooling; for instance, the intellectual abilities needed to learn to read, speak a foreign language or understand new mathematical concepts, the creative abilities needed to solve many different kinds of problems and produce original work in science, literature and art, the physical abilities involved in sport, music or woodwork, or the social abilities which children use daily in interactions with classmates, teachers, and parents.

Aptitudes or gifts can be observed more easily and directly in young children because environmental influences and systematic learning have exerted their moderating influence in a limited way only. However, they still show themselves in older children and even in adults through the facility and speed with which individuals acquire new skills in any given field of human activity. The easier or faster the learning process, the greater the natural abilities. It is these natural abilities which some laypersons call "talent" or, more appropriately "natural talent" (Gagné, 1991) - in this model, however, they are designated as "gifts" or "aptitudes".

As defined in my model, talents progressively emerge from the transformation of these aptitudes into the well-trained and systematically developed skills characteristic of a particular field of human activity or performance. These fields can be extremely diverse. Figure 1 shows some of the many talent fields relevant to school-aged youth. A given natural ability can express itself in many different ways, depending on the field of activity adopted by the individual. For example dexterity, as a natural physical ability, can be modelled into the particular manual skills of a pianist, a painter or a video game player. Similarly, intelligence as a natural ability can be modelled into the scientific reasoning of a chemist, the game analysis of a chess player or the strategic planning of an athlete.

In this model, natural abilities or aptitudes act as the "raw material" or the constituent elements of talents (Gagné, 1993). It follows from this relationship that talent necessarily implies the presence of well above average natural abilities; one cannot be talented without first being gifted. The reverse is not true, however. It is possible for well above average natural abilities to remain simply as gifts, and not to be translated into talents, as is witnessed by the well-known phenomenon of academic underachievement among intellectually gifted children.

The process of talent development manifests itself when the child or adolescent engages in systematic learning, training and practising; the higher the level of talent sought, the more intensive these three activities will be. This process is facilitated (or hindered) by the action of two types of catalysts; intrapersonal and environmental. Among the intrapersonal catalysts, motivation plays a crucial role in initiating the process of talent development, guiding it, and sustaining it through obstacles, boredom and occasional failure. Hereditary predispositions to behave in certain ways (temperament), as well as acquired styles of behaviour (personality characteristics and attitudes), also contribute significantly to support and stimulate, or slow down and even block, talent development.

The environment manifests its significant impact in many different ways. The surroundings exert their influence both at a macroscopic level (eg. geographic, demographic, sociological) and in a more microscopic framework (size of family, personality and parenting style of care-givers, socio-economic status, etc). Many different persons, not only parents and teachers but also siblings and peers, may exert positive or negative influence on the process of talent development. Gifted education programs within or outside the school belong to the category of undertakings; they are the more systematic form of undertaking which influences the process of talent development. Finally, significant events (the death of a parent, winning a prize or award, suffering a major accident or illness) can influence markedly the course of talent development. Chance could be added as a fifth causal factor associated with the environment; but, strictly speaking, it is more appropriately a characteristic of some of the elements placed in any of the other four categories (eg. the "chance" of being born in a particular family; the "chance" of the school in which the child is enrolled deciding to develop a program for gifted and talented students).

Any definition of normative concepts must specify how subjects differ from the norm, and what it means in terms of the prevalence of the population subsumed under the label. I place the threshold for both the giftedness and talent concepts at around the 85th percentile (approximately 1 standard deviation above the mean); in other words, those who belong to approximately the top 15% of the relevant reference group in terms of ability (for giftedness) or achievement (for talent) merit the relevant label. It must be clearly noted, however, that this "generous" choice of threshold is balanced by a recognition of levels or degrees of giftedness or talent within the population. These comprise four groups. The largest group, the top 15%, is termed "basically" gifted or talented. The three other subgroups are labelled, respectively, "moderately" (the top 2-3%), "highly" (the top 1 or 2 in a thousand) and "extremely" (the top 20-30 in a million). As in other fields of special education, the nature of the interventive program which a school develops for a gifted or talented student should be influenced by the level of the student's giftedness or talent as well as the domain or field in which it is sited.

References

Gagné, F. (1991). Toward a differentiated model of giftedness and talent. In N. Colangelo and G. A. Davis (Eds.), Handbook of gifted education (pp. 65-80). Boston: Allyn and Bacon.

Gagné, F. (1993). Constructs and models pertaining to exceptional human abilities. In K. A. Heller, F. J. Monks & A. H. Passow (Eds.), International Handbook of Research and Development of Giftedness and Talent (pp. 63-85). Oxford: Pergamon Press.

Professor Gagné's distinction between giftedness and talent has dominated gifted education in recent years. He prepared this summary for the NSW Ministry of Education, as a comparison to its own distinction on this basis of whether the child's potential was based in a single domain (called "talented") or in multiple domains (called "gifted"). It was published in Gifted in July 1997, pp 15-16.

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