ABSTRACT
Biographies of successful people provide interesting vistas on the development of psychological characteristics, including talents. A remarkable phenomenon is that outstanding qualities of people may remain hidden for a rather long period of time before they become apparent. Mediocre students may, for instance, at a much later point turn out to be brilliant scientists, artists, or sportsmen (Kalinowski, 1985; Schneider, 1993; Sloane & Sosniak, 1985; Sosniak, 1985). Nice illustrations of such developmental trajectories can be found in Sosniak’s (1985) study of the life history of 21 of the most successful young American pianists. At the time Sosniak studied their history, the pianists were all in their early thirties and highly successful. However, reports by their teachers and parents revealed that the majority hardly showed any sign of giftedness during the first years of their music training. Only after several years of training, around adolescence for some and even later for others, did their performance start to excel compared to other children. Why did their giftedness not appear at an earlier stage? Why were their teachers and parents unable to discover their giftedness earlier? Were they insufficiently attentive or skilled to discover the slumbering talents of their youngsters? Or, was the later occurring talent not slumbering at all, but absent in the beginning, requiring for its creation a lengthy period of nurturing and education? Are talents hidden properties within a person waiting to be awakened by particular circumstances? Or are they properties that are created by continuous nurturing? These questions are important as their answers not only reveal important features of the ways in which talents emerge, but also provide insight into the type of characteristics that comprise a talent.
