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