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Topics Below:
Your Natural Gifts
Visit the Johnson O'Connor Research Foundation Web Site at
 Link to the Johnson O'Connor Foundation Official
Web Site
Link to contact the
testing centers:
Johnson O'Connor
Research Foundation Testing Centers
These have vicinity maps and location information for the
various centers.
Letter from the Director of
Research, Robert F. Kyle
By 1943, Johnson O'Connor felt that the evidence suggested
that aptitudes are inherited. Unfortunately, for the half century following
World War II this thesis was decidedly "politically incorrect." I remember
O'Connor lamenting in the early 1960s that while people accept the fact that
genes determine physical characteristics such as height, they "perversely
refuse to consider the notion" that genes might determine mental abilities in
in any significant way.
Ironically, during 1997, the Foundation's seventy-fifth
anniversary, there have been innumerable reports in the press that tend to
support the ideas espoused by O'Connor more than fifty years ago. A June 1997
article in The Wall Street Journal titled "Genes Appear to Play a
Larger Role in Mental Abilities Than Experience" states that "Genes are more
important than experience in determining mental abilities--contrary to
scientists' expectations." The phrase "contrary to scientists' expectations"
seems to me to confirm O'Connor's remark to me thirty-five years ago that
there was a "perverse refusal" to consider genetics as a factor in studying
mental traits. The study concluded that genetics accounted for about 60% of
variation in performance on standardized tests of mental ability. Similar
findings have been reported in many other recent studies.
Another 1997 Wall Street Journal article asks "Why
do men and women communicate so differently? It may be something in our
genes." It reports on a study done on women born with a single X chromosome--a
result of a condition known as Turner's syndrome. Normally a woman inherits
two X chromosomes--one from each parent--as opposed to men who inherit only
one maternal X chromosome. The researchers found that "women with only a
maternal X [like men have] had worse social skills [as did men] than women
with a paternal X." Had these researchers administered a test of structural
visualization to these subjects rather than a test of social skills, I wonder
what they would have found.
A July 1997 article in The New York Times is
titled "In New Theory, Single Gene Makes a Left-Hander." The article points
out that many studies suggest that handedness is a learned trait, but that
"genetic theories like Dr. Klar's hold instead that people are hard-wired for
handedness in the womb." At least as far back as 1940 O'Connor theorized that
handedness was inherited, but he admitted basing this only "one bit of
circumstantial evidence" (Unsolved Business Problems, 1940).
I can recall Johnson O'Connor in the early 1960s lecturing
the staff on the English vocabulary age curve. It was based on more than
29,000 cases down to age eight. He informed us that the curve could be
described as "a rectangular hyperbola referred to its own asymptotes."
Extrapolating the curve downward, he could predict the point at which
vocabulary knowledge began--namely, within a month or two from birth. An
August 1997 editorial in U.S. News & World Report points out that a
newborn baby's brain develops with phenomenal speed. It notes that "by age 2,
the number of synapses... approaches adult levels, and by age 3 a child's
brain has one quadrillion such connections." It then quotes professors Todd
Risley and Betty Hart, who say "that the number of words an infant hears each
day may be the single most important predictor of later intelligence and
economic and social success." I must congratulate these researchers for
discovering something we have been preaching since the 1930s.
I hope that the hundredth anniversary of the Foundation,
the rest of the world will have totally caught up with us!
Robert F. Kyle
Director of Research.
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Inherited aptitudes form the core of who we are!
Aptitudes dictate how we approach the world around us and
relationships with others.
Aptitudes are important in determining our careers.
More than that, though, they color every aspect of our
lives and determine to a large part who we feel comfortable with as friends,
family, and associates.
Understanding inherited aptitudes gives us an opportunity
to appreciate that we are not better than others, but that we are
different. It is that understanding that can bring peace and
understanding to our relationships with other people.
Return to Topics
Personality:
Objective and subjective.
- Objective: Works best with others.
- Subjective: Belongs in specialized, individual work.
Graphoria:
Clerical ability, adeptness at paperwork and dealing with figures and symbols.
Ideaphoria:
Creative imagination, fluency of ideas.
Structural
Visualization: Ability to think in three dimensions, to
visualize solids.
- The antithesis of Structural Visualization is Abstract visualization,
the ability to deal in ideas.
- Lack of structural visualization means a person has abstract
visualization.
Finger Dexterity:
Ability to manipulate fingers skillfully.
Tweezer Dexterity:
Ability to handle small tools easily and skillfully.
Observation:
Highly observant, characterized by being able to identify details
from memory.
- Those with observation are able to quickly scan pictures and accurately
identify missing items from subsequent photographs.
Design Memory:
Ability to memorize designs readily.
Tonal Memory:
Ability to remember sounds, an "ear" for music.
Pitch Discrimination:
Ability to differentiate musical notes, a trait needed in playing a musical
instrument whose pitch is not set.
Rhythmic Ability:
Ability to keep time, to "hear the beat."
Timbre Discrimination:
Ability to discern one musical instrument from another when the same pitch is
played, for example, to discern between the same note played by an oboe or a
clarinet.
- This aptitude is required for photographers.
Number Memory:
Ability to remember numbers of all kinds, to keep many things in
your mind.
Numerical Reasoning:
An aptitude for identifying relationships among sets of numbers.
Silograms:
Ability to learn languages, ease in remembering unfamiliar words, technical
jargon, etc.
Foresight:
Ability to look ahead, concern or prudence about the future.
Color Perception:
The ability to distinguish colors.
- Lack of this ability is color blindness.
Inductive Reasoning:
The ability to make a correct association among seemingly unrelated parts.
Deductive Reasoning:
Ability to break structures down, identify, and organize individual parts from
a whole.
Proportion Appraisal:
Ability to discern pleasing proportions, that is the golden mean, discovered
by the Greeks, consisting of being able to recognize the one-third to
two-thirds combination.
- This aptitude is required for architects,
sculptors, and painters.
Return to Topics
Other
Traits useful in identifying talents and abilities:
Eye
dominance: Right handed people should have the right eye
dominant; left handed people should have the left eye dominant. Crossed
dominance should be resolved to reduce awkwardness.
Grip:
A strong, fast grip indicates a high physical energy level.
Vocabulary:
Vocabulary is the tool set of language. It is measured by the
level of precision acquired for its use. A high vocabulary generally
consists mainly of words from Greek and Latin roots. A high vocabulary
person uses words with precision—the right word at the right time.
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With one exception, that of a
salesman, the higher the vocabulary of the career or profession, the
higher the earnings—the pay.
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The highest vocabulary
professions are:
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Managers
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Attorneys
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Doctors
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Teachers generally have a lower
vocabulary than managers, attorneys, and doctors. In fact, they are ranked
about number 10 after other professions.
-
Artists generally rank at the
lowest vocabulary levels and with a few notable exceptions are paid
accordingly.
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Only about 3,500 words separate
the high vocabulary person from the low vocabulary person.
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English vocabulary stops abruptly
in the scale of difficulty. Generally speaking, people who rank in, say,
the fifty-second percentile, seldom know words beyond that percentile and
would not be expected to have more that a smattering of words unknown to
80% to 99% of the population.
-
The rate of learning is greatest
just at the boundary of our vocabulary level. The technique is to learn
words in sequence, not at random.
Return to Topics
Bibliography:
"Your
Natural Gifts"
by Margaret E. Broadly
Third Edition, Revised 1994
Copyright 1972, 1977, 1986 Margaret E. Broadley
EPM Publications, Inc.
1003 Turkey Run Road
McLean, Virginia 22101
Margaret Broadly died just after
finishing the third edition just prior to publishing.
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