Traditional conceptions of giftedness assume that only talented individuals possess the necessary gifts required to reach the highest levels of performance. This article describes an alternative view that expert performance results from acquired cognitive and physiological adaptations due to extended deliberate practice. A review of evidence, such as historical increases in performance, the requirement of years of daily deliberate practice, and structural changes in the mediating mechanisms, questions the existence of individual differences that impose innate limits on performance attainable with deliberate practice. The proposed framework describes how the processes mediating normal development of ability and everyday skill acquisition differ from the extended acquisition of reproducibly superior (expert) performance and how perceived “giftedness” gives children access to superior training resources, resulting in developmental advantages.
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