High Cognitive Minds

There’s a kind of morbid fascination, for me, in seeing the many ways in which psychology fails to come anywhere near being a science. Educational psychology, in particular, suffers from researchers’ biases that wouldn’t be tolerated in other areas. And one of the most common biases is for the researchers to think they know what they’re seeing.

Eide Neurolearing Blog’s most recent entry centers on the Cookie Thief test. “When you show this picture to adults and ask them to describe it, the usual response is a dry recitation of what people, objects, and events are being seen in the picture.

“But in many kids (often creative ones, young engineers, artists, or gifted storytellers), we get the most insightful, charming, and sometimes downright devious responses.”

The assumption here is that adults have lost the ability to think outside the box. The Eides ask: “Why is it that kids seems so much better at out-of-the-box thinking compared to adults? One reason may be that common expectations of becoming adults include become more organized, being able to plan and anticipate more events, and become more consistent in our behaviors.”

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If you’ve ever wondered what happens to the young winners of prestigious science competitions, take a look at this new series of articles from Scientific American. “Where Are They Now?” profiles winners of the Westinghouse Science Talent Search. The first profile, of Nobel Prize-winning chemist Roald Hoffman, suggests that the series might offer some insights into the life paths of the gifted, at least those with a talent for science.

Chemistry wasn’t the first career choice for Hoffmann, who won his Westinghouse prize in 1955 for a study of cosmic ray particles. His parents wanted him to become a doctor. Inspiring college courses almost turned him into an art historian, but he had to compromise with his parents’ ambition for him. "I had enough courage to tell my parents I wasn't going to be a doctor, but not enough courage to tell them I wanted to go into the history of art. So I went to graduate school in chemistry," he says. "I fell into it, but I love it."

The profiles will be published on a weekly basis. I’ve set up an RSS feed on my reader so that I don’t misss  any.

The Watcher: Roald Hoffmann 

Edweek.org has a variety of resources for teachers, but prowling around, I discovered that a good deal of their material is useful for parents and anyone who’s concerned with education. It’s not specifically for the gifted, but this recent blog entry is certainly one that fits here very well.

The Bill of Rights for the Gifted was originally published in the NAGC’s September 2007 issue of “Parenting for High Potential.” Check out the full bill with all the details here. There’s also a link to a PDF mini-poster of the bill.

A Gifted Child’s Bill of Rights

1. You have a right to know about your giftedness.
2. You have a right to learn something new every day.
3. You have the right to be passionate about your talent area without apologies.
4. You have a right to have an identity beyond your talent area.
5. You have a right to feel good about your accomplishments.
6. You have a right to make mistakes.
7. You have a right to seek guidance in the development of your talent.
8. You have a right to have multiple peer groups and a variety of friends.
9. You have a right to choose which of your talent areas you wish to pursue.
10. You have a right to not be gifted at everything.

Here’s an article on changing trends in gifted education that you might find rather depressing. I’m not sure whether it’s depressing, or simply pointing to something that hasn’t ever made a heck of a lot of difference. The author listed topics that were “hot” for the last 10-30 years but are now getting far less interest. She also lists those that she sees coming to the forefront. She bases her choices on catalogs of National Association for Gifted Children conventions, which is probably about as good a measure as any, of changes in the field of giftedness.

What has decreased in interest? Practically everything that applies to the individual child: underachievement, advocacy, identification, learning styles, among others. Another loser is the once popular topic of multiple intelligences. I suspect that this one reflects the usual fate of fads which are supposed to be the “next big thing,” but turn out to be just one more bandaid on a very big wound.

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Why are the people who are supposed to be the experts saying the same things and asking the same questions they’ve been saying and asking for at least fifty years? John D. Wasserman, Ph.D—associate professor at George Mason University, clinical neuropsychologist, expert on psychological testing. I read what he has to say and I’m going but? but! but...

“Exceptionally and profoundly gifted children...have been found to have qualitatively and quantitatively unique cognitive characteristics that differentiate them from intellectually gifted children performing at lower ranges of intellectually gifted ability (i.e., an IQ between 130 and 160).” Tell me something new, please.

“...the news media in every community will periodically cover an exceptionally or profoundly gifted child: a nine-month-old who names objects and uses words; an eighteen-month-old who knows the alphabet; a three-year-old who is able to read more than children’s books;...or a ten-year-old who graduates from high school.” These are wunder-kids, the prodigies who wow the crowds, but does that make them profoundly gifted? The fact is that the majority of these media wonders grow up, settle into unspectacular but comfortable careers, and are never heard of again.

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Ainan Cawley. This seven year old prodigy’s name comes up fairly often in the search terms, twice in the last two days.  Today’s issue of the Times Online has an article about his father’s so-far unsuccessful attempts to find a university placement for him. Ainan’s extreme giftedness has naturally been a subject of interest to many people, an interest constantly promoted by his father, even to the extent of responding to letters to the editor, and answering questions or leaving comments about giftedness all over the web, always leaving the URL of his blog. I have no doubt that he will show up here in response to this post.

But what I’m interested in is encapsulated in his responser to a comment on the Times article. He said “It is far more harmful to ignore the intellectual needs of a prodigy, than to engage them.” The assumption that rapid acceleration and early college is the only way to avoid ignoring a child’s intellectual needs is at the heart of books like Accidental Genius, and of Mr. Cawley’s efforts to have Ainan admitted to college.

He is following in the footsteps of generations of parents trying to understand and encourage their children’s extraordinary abilities. It isn’t his fault, any more than it was the fault of Michael Kearney’s parents, who followed the same path, that more than fifty years of research into giftedness has nothing to offer them in the way of alternatives. The mother of “Adam,” one of the prodigies discussed in David Feldman’s 1986 book, Nature’s Gambit, was desperate to support her son’s intellectual development. At one point she asked how to find an Aristotle capable of educating Adam. It was clear that she had a much better understanding than most parents, including Mr Cawley, of the kind of education her son needed, but had no idea how to go about providing it.

Does it require an Aristotle to educate these children?

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