Success is Thinking and Working S-M-A-R-T-E-R not Harder
by Clifford Morris
How do humans become experts and intelligent beings? That is, are all of us who we are due to our biological background, agreeing that inheritance and genetics play a firm factor in our overall cognitive potential ... or, perchance, can we enhance our smarts via deliberate practice?
Here is how I see all of this. I liken the cognitive field of human intelligence research as to a continuum. Each end of this continuum houses a major theoretical camp, each camp being (theoretically) polar opposite to the other. Those who tent out in the one camp suppose that smarter individuals are more intelligent than others because they possess the right genes. In other words, our cerebral capabilities include stronger biological underpinnings and are more genetically influenced. Such campers argue that there is only one (1) unitary general factor (g) that accounts for a large part of the variance between all of us.
Those who sleep in the opposite camp disagree strongly with the above. They argue against this more hereditary stance ... that it is the environment which strongly influences gene expression. They argue that our multiple smarts are composed of various cognitive capacities, and that it is the combination of these abilities via deliberate practice which constitutes ones overall bundle of smarts. Still others argue that males and females tend to select the environments that best suit their abilities. This latter stance considerably complicates the gene versus environment debate.
While I believe that all of our intelligences and various levels of expertise are products of mother nature plus nurturing environments, we must remember that we are not fully slaves to our genes or prisoners to our background. In short, it is my belief that success stems from blending of best using those intelligences that our parents gave us and by developing the talents that we have deliberately polished over the years.
As the jury is still out on all of this, could the content from this Author Index and Subject Index aid us?
Ottawa | Revised on Thursday, 04 December, 2008