The field of gifted education defines its special population around two key concepts: giftedness and talent. Using the entries for these two terms in the Subject Index of the first edition of this book (Sternberg & Davidson, 1986) – or, for that matter, the present edition or any handbook in the field (e.g., Colangelo & Davis, 2003; Heller, Mönks, Sternberg, & Subotnik, 2000) – the curious browser will soon discover the fascinating creativity of scholars in their attempts to circumscribe the nature of giftedness and talent. In some cases, the concept of talent does not appear or is not defined (e.g., Davidson, 1986; Renzulli, 1986; Sternberg, 1986); in other cases, which is the dominant position in the literature, both terms are used as synonyms, as in Marland's (1972) well-known definition (“Gifted and talented children are. … ” p. 4). Csikszentmihalyi and Robinson explicitly announce that nondifferentiation, stating: “talent, giftedness, and prodigious performance [italics in text] will be used interchangeably” (1986, p. 264). Occasionally, talent becomes a subcategory of giftedness: “The second component of giftedness is talent,” affirms Feldhusen (1986, p. 113); or “giftedness encompasses a wide variety of abilities, talents, or propensities” (Haensly, Reynolds, & Nash, 1986, p. 131). For his part, Feldman (1986) associates talent with potential and giftedness with achievement. He affirms: “Talent from a cognitive-developmental perspective is the potential for constructive interaction with various aspects of the world of experience. … If these processes of interaction lead to high level performance, then it is appropriate to speak of giftedness” (p. 287).