Yes to UM's post; part of the problem in parsing this, it seems to me, is that the terms involved are just so darned slippery.
How do you decide which "domains" are worth the name, for example?
What about a child that can do NOTHING but play with Legos for hours? My attention would wander... so that child is better at this than this adult is.
My DD6 had the
reading ability of a college-educated adult, for example. I hardly thought this worth applying the term "prodigy" to her, however.
I don't really know. The term prodigy
seems to mostly be applied to children who have obvious talents that many adults DO NOT possess. These are not necessarily things that can be taught to just anyone-- at least not at such a level of proficiency, if that makes sense. Most adults can't learn to play chess more than "adequately" after all, so a child of 8-10yo who
can beat most adults at chess might be considered a "prodigy."
What I find fascinating is that simply
playing at a high level of technical skill seldom warrants the term, it seems. For some reason, most people interpret that as training-- not innate ability. I'm not sure that is correct either. What
do you call someone like my DD, who doesn't really
care much about music, yet plays late intermediate works on
less than 15minutes of practice daily? Well, she certainly lacks rage to master, that's for sure. So does the fact that she can whip out Bartok and Scarlatti with such minimal practice say anything about her? I think that it probably does-- she has the latent
ability... but isn't interested in
developing that talent. But she's no piano prodigy. Would she
look like one if I were willing to employ Amy Chua-level pressure? Perhaps. In fact, I think it plausible.
I'm not sure that I really understand the question completely-- after all, HG+ is a category which is inclusive of PG persons.
Not everyone who is PG has a talent that elevates them to "prodigy" status in the popular conception of the term. There is a lot of misunderstanding about that, in fact. The two terms aren't really synonymous.
A child
can (IMO) exhibit a prodigy talent and not even
be PG. Savants do this with some regularity-- it's what makes them so remarkable and fascinating.
On the other hand, a child with very high cognitive potential may lack a singular
talent like this. My DD seems to-- she's quite well-rounded, but not "extraordinary" in any way that seems fascinating to others. I don't know how much of that is her choice to be this way, versus a lack of an area that
could be developed this way. There's an element of intrinsic motivation that comes into play when you talk about prodigy manifesting in children.
