Hegarty, M., Montello, D. R., Richardson, A. E., Ishikawa, T. & Lovelace, K. Spatial abilities at different scales: individual differences in aptitude-test performance and spatial-layout learning.
The president of Harvard recently stirred up a storm of protest by speculating that differences in aptitude, rather than discrimination, may explain why fewer women achieve excellence in science.
I'd be truly convinced only by data that show significant differences in aptitude between boys and girls at age 3 or 4, when they've had less opportunity to be affected by our (potentially still-biased) educational system.
But given all the progress made in math by girls, who now take more math and science classes than boys and get better grades, Dr. Ceci and Dr. Williams say that differences in aptitude are not the primary cause of the gender gap in academic science.
These biological differences in aptitude do not mean that individuals with a knack for languages can just move to Japan and passively await fluency.
"People vary in their aptitude like they do in learning math or in playing basketball". These biological differences in aptitude do not mean that individuals with a knack for languages can just move to Japan and passively await fluency.
As long as human capital accumulation before primary school is related to parents' education and wealth, this finding suggests that differences in aptitude test scores are mostly created at primary school.
In this study, the contribution of genetic influences on individual differences in aptitude and talent was investigated.
The origin of individual differences in aptitude, defined as a domain-specific skill within the normal ability range, and talent, defined as a domain specific skill of exceptional quality, is under debate.
That is likely to be so primarily, as Ackerman has suggested, because Holland's typology is underpinned by wide-ranging, broadly defined individual differences in aptitude and personality [ 36] which are also likely to be stable across time and cultures [ 57].
