Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums GT Research Prodigies have large working memories

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/scott-barry-kaufman/the-mind-of-the-prodigy_b_1655853.html
The Mind of the Prodigy
Scott Barry Kaufman, Ph.D.
Huffington Post
07/09/2012

...

A new study in the journal Intelligence sheds some new light on prodigies. Psychologist Joanne Ruthsatz and violin virtuoso Jourdan Urbach adminstered the latest edition of the Stanford-Binet IQ test to nine prominent child prodigies who have all been featured on national and international television programs. Most of the children reached professional-level performance in their domain by the age of 10, and their chosen domains were notably rule-based. There was one art prodigy, one math prodigy, four musical prodigies, one prodigy who switched from music to gastronomy, and another prodigy who switched from music to art.

...

Looking at all eight children together, they found some striking findings. The first thing they noticed is the wide range of IQ scores -- from 108 to 147. Consistent with the earlier work of David Henry Feldman and Martha Morelock, it appears that a high IQ is not necessary to be a prodigy. More telling, however, were the subtest scores. All of the prodigies showed uneven cognitive profiles. In fact, one prodigy obtained a total IQ score of 108 and a visual spatial IQ score of 71, which is worse than 97 percent of the general population. That didn't prevent him from winning a prestigious award for his violin jazz improvisational abilities, becoming the youngest person ever to perform with Wynton Marsalis at the Lincoln Center! He also scored three films without any formal composition lessons. Again, this is consistent with prior research showing that balanced cognitive test profiles are more the exception than the rule among academically precocious students as well as students who are precocious in art and music.

More striking is that every single prodigy scored off the charts in working memory -- better than 99 percent of the general population. In fact, six out of the eight prodigies scored at the 99.9th percentile! Working memory isn't solely the ability to memorize a string of digits. That's short-term memory. Instead, working memory involves the ability to hold information in memory while being able to manipulate and process other incoming information. On the Stanford-Binet IQ test, working memory is measured in both the verbal and non-verbal domains and includes tasks such as processing sentences while having to remember the last word of each sentence, and recalling the location of blocks and numbers in the correct order in which they were presented. There have been many descriptions of the phenomenal working memory of prodigies, including a historical description of Mozart that involves his superior ability to memorize musical pieces and manipulate scores in his head.

*************************************

The paper is

Child prodigy: A novel cognitive profile places elevated general intelligence, exceptional working memory and attention to detail at the root of prodigiousness
by Joanne Ruthsatz Jourdan B. Urbach
Intelligence
Available online 3 July 2012
Abstract
Child prodigies are unusual for their early and exceptional adoption of what are traditionally thought of as adult abilities. As part of an effort to better understand the underpinnings of these extraordinary individuals' talent, the researcher examined the cognitive and developmental profiles of eight child prodigies by taking their developmental histories and administering the Stanford-Binet 5th ed. full scale intelligence test and the Autism-Spectrum Quotient (AQ). The collected data reveals a startling picture. While each of the prodigies demonstrated an at least moderately elevated level of intelligence, the prodigies' full scale IQ scores were not consistently on the extreme end of the spectrum. What was consistently extraordinary, however, was the child prodigies' working memory scores—a category in which every prodigy tested in the 99th percentile. Additional results suggest a previously unknown connection between child prodigies and autism. The prodigies' family histories yielded an unlikely number of autistic relatives. And the child prodigies received elevated AQ scores with respect to attention to detail, a trait associated with autism. The prodigies did not, however, display many of the other traits typically associated with autism. This result raises the possibility of a moderated autism that actually enables the prodigies' extraordinary talent.

No great surprises there, although it was a little unexpected that some of the prodigies had such low IQ scores.

I'd be interested to learn more about what differentiates non-Asperger prodigies from HG+ non-prodigies with similar gifts in working memory. Domains with a real-time performance component, such as music performance, would obviously benefit from additional gifts in processing speed. I wonder how much our areas of interest are informed by relative difficulties or advantages in certain areas, which we don't tend to notice consciously. Thanks for posting.

I admittedly did not read the whole thing, but if Working Memory is somehow a key, I'm wondering if there's something to the fact that when you hit 99.9%, you can't really figure out really how high/rare that is. Maybe if there were some sort of test that could further differentiate that particular tail? I too am interested in what lucounu said about how HG+ kids with similar working memory scores differ from prodigies.

I recall reading on some earlier article that prodegies who reach an acclaimed adult level of performance by the age of nine or ten achieve that in chess or music because natural development has kept anyone from writing a novel of that caliber at that, they simply don't have enough experience at life yet to write a novel at that level at that age.  We see articles of 12-14 yr olds performing science at that  level. This article is saying that these ten child prodegies did not, on average, have very high iqs.  What they do have is very high working memory scores.  The article also linked them to having close family relatives with autism.  I liked the question in the comments, "before we developed chess and pianos what did our ancestors kids with these traits look like, what did they (chess & music prodigys) do?" 

One thing to also keep in mind is that hard work also plays a role in determining who will become a prodigy. What differentiates the talented from the great? Malcolm Gladwell's books would argue that alot of it is how much you practice and hard work; how many hours you put into something.
Remember that in the original Terman high IQ studies from roughly 1910 or so-1960's, none of his "Termites" or high IQ children went on to win a Nobel. As a group, they did well, but there were some who did not do well. In fact, some of the biggest predictors of which of the high IQ children went on to good jobs/careers was the income level of the family and the mom's educational background (it was alot more unusual back then to have highly educated women).
There is clearly alot more to success or being a prodigy than just your IQ score.

Same here, Dottie. My son scored in the 99.9th across the boards, but I wouldn't say he stands out in any way. He's still young, but at this point I'd say he's "the jack of all trades, master of none", as it were. Brilliant in every way, but definitely not a prodigy.

The subject is completely fascinating.

I think that observation may be the key. It's hinted at in the study, in fact. These kids had UNEVEN subscores... and I have to wonder at their performance when looked at over several unrelated areas. Are they chess prodigies that also write poetry like college students at age 8? Probably not. If they write like typical 8yo peers, in fact, that might be a clue as to what makes prodigies so different from most PG people.

Perhaps that very quality of being 'omnibus gifted' in the historic sense of the term-- that is, having global multipotentiality-- may prevent the development of an area of prodigious ability.

There is no way that anyone would term anyone in my family a prodigy, either. We're almost all jacks of all trades, so to speak, though we frequently appear to be "masters" to those around us, in whatever discipline we happen to be working in (at least as adults, but we also see this in DD with individual subject teachers who think that she IS working in an area of 'profound ability' when it's just another class like any other). We tend to have the ability to be "experts" in multiple areas of not-particular-strengths or interest, and maybe even 'exceptional' in areas of interest and extra effort. Not "prodigy" or "superstar" quality, however. But I suspect that it is because of the relative evenness of ability throughout a wide range of subdomains.

Working memory may be only a small part of the story there; in those with multipotentiality at play, it may simply allow you to work in parallel and do more different things well, not to do any one thing to such an extraordinary degree.

The multipotentiality may even get in the way of the kind of focus needed to develop prodigy talent/ability by 'diluting' the effort across unrelated domains.

I was going to raise this same point. It seems that the unevenness of the scores plays a significant role, because if a child has a limited skill set, they would naturally focus on those skills and develop them further. A child with a broader skill set would enjoy a larger number of pursuits, sampling them all to different degrees and seeking novelty over perfection.

Good points, people. I like this phrasing: "sampling them all to different degrees and seeking novelty over perfection". It really rolls off the language center(s).

Thanks for the post--very interesting. A question--DD(now 8) took the SB5 at about 5 1/2 and her Working Memory score was the mean (10). Just was reevaluated this year at just over 8 yrs with WISC-IV and got a 17 on digit span and 16 on letter/number sequence, for an index of 138/ 99%. (and no signs of prodigy-ness, and also I am not pushing for that--just saying, apparently there is some discrepancy in how working memory might be measured). I asked the local psych who did the testing (who was woefully uninformative and I think ignorant of GT issues) about this and she said that one of the measures was verbal and one was non-verbal (sorry--can't remember which)--which returns me to my persistent (but not urgent) concern about how these tests actually measure what they say they are measuring. So I am curious about the OP and what measure the study used--and whether it matters for 'prodigousness.' (also FWIW this particular local psych did not even mention GAI or the extended WISC-IV scores until after I figured that out and asked--yet ANOTHER of many reasons to go with an 'expert' on gifted if your
kid is anything besides completely normal in their behavior; b/c after that we used the scores from that eval to get DD into DYS, not that it helped with her teachers from last year--but I digress). But sorry--if I were a responsible netizen, I should have researched this issue before posting; it's just that I'm so totally behind in everything else, so I will try to figure it out soon.