Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Article: High IQ = Different Sensory Perceptions

This would explain why DS8 can't find his shoes in the middle of his bedroom floor, LOL.

Interesting. DD seems to "over-process" information. I have had a few different people tell me she notices details that no one else would ever comment on (like how many spaces the line on a quarter note takes up, or specific patterns in musical pieces), but she is incredibly slow with seeing things that should be obvious, like 2+3=5. One psych told me he thinks DD has slow processing speed because she's not filtering things out and takes in way too much sensory information (in terms of auditory/visual perception at least). I always figured it's related to her ADHD.

Noted intelligence researcher Arthur Jensen found that reaction time is negatively correlated to IQ (smarter people are faster on average) and wrote a book "Clocking the Mind: Mental Chronometry and Individual Differences" (2006).

That's consistent with considerably higher prevalence of SPD among gifted versus neurotypical children.

http://www.spdfoundation.net/gifted.html

It also fits ASD-like elements of personality particularly following some of the research in mini-columns and some of the Eides' work.

I don't like the "high IQ" tag in the report of the research. Higher IQ would be a better fit to the participant distribution which includes a single participant over 140. But the scatter is very compelling. In the cortical thickness studies, gifted IQ and highly gifted had a completely different pattern of thickening and thinning.

I also didn't notice vision acuity in the study, which has an interesting link to IQ.

Original study:
http://www.cell.com/current-biology/abstract/S0960-9822(13)00494-6

Interesting article, thanks for posting. I wonder how (in layman terms) this correlates with processing speed in high IQ individuals. I also wonder how it relates to development optometrist test results for high IQ children.

I notice it when traffic lights change. I think high IQ people prefer to drive. That radar that is being put in autos to sense accidents ahead of time - our brains do that. Also, we are more likely to be hurt in an accident because we see it coming, tense up, then get hit and it can make our soft tissue injuries worse. I have it logged for any future such situation, if you can't get out of the way, don't tense up.

I'm thinking that this is probably a proxy phenomenon.

Personally, I don't enjoy driving all that much. DEFINITELY not city driving, which my DH is both better at and less stressed by. I see TOO MUCH, if that makes sense, and being a visual processor of information, I have trouble limiting that data input. On the open highway, I am fine-- but in a cityscape, my intuitive understanding of the physics means that I know that I can't process it all, and certainly not rapidly enough to respond in sufficient time to avoid every hazard. The chaotic/irrational driving behavior of other drivers is an uncontrolled variable.

My spouse prefers to drive, because, well, I'm not the partner with the high visual-spatial skills. And personally, while I appreciate their utility, I abominate internal combustion engines, mainly because of the exhaust/smell/pollution and the vibration.