High Cognitive Minds

“…the theory of critical differences, …a distinction which arises not because we are dealing with a new species of ability, but from the fact that when human capacities surpass certain levels of performance, the achievements to which they give rise may take on altered characteristics. ( David Wechsler, The Range of Human Capacities)

Jerome Kagan, David Henry Feldman, and John Gardner have all commented on the near-universal preference for viewing intelligence as part of a continuum. It’s much easier to believe that individuals merely have less or more of what everybody else has than to consider the possibility of “critical differences.”  The emphasis on IQ scores is a symptom of this desire for continuity, and is also a way to sweep other views under the rug.

Wechsler is partly correct and partly incorrect. It depends what capacities you’re looking at. A virtuoso pianist is using the same skills as a moderately talented amateur, but is so far superior that it amounts to a critical difference. This is just as true in many fields of endeavor. But when we turn to cognition, it may be more realistic to say that there is, indeed, a new species of ability.

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Unless we want to believe in some type of mystical causation or in pure chance, our basic assumption in trying to understand exceptional intellectual capacity must be that all cognitive functions, including the rarest and the most exceptional, are biologically based. If there is a causal mechanism for precocity, for high-level intellectual functioning, and for creativity, it must be a facet, or a combination of facets, of the brain’s structure and operations.

The difficulty in talking about this is the lack of studies specifically intended to reveal the biological basis of giftedness and intellectual creativity. It’s made even more difficult by the lack of studies which might show common mental traits among the gifted and the creative. It’s a dangerous area even to think about because there are so many ways to go wrong. Theories, more or less plausible, are possible, but not proof.

In the literature, both high levels of giftedness and of creativity are more often associated with various types of psychopathology than with fundamental  brain mechanisms. Many lists of identifying characteristics mix cognitive and personality traits without attempting to distinguish between them. To confuse the issue even further, several streams of pop psychology lead people to believe that certain personal characteristics are either indicative of giftedness or are forms of giftedness in themselves. These include Goleman’s theory of emotional intelligence, Gardner’s multiple intelligences, and Dabrowski’s oversensitivities as channeled by some giftedness advocates.

To put it plainly: giftedness is not a personality trait. Creativity is not a personality trait. Intellectual giftedness and creativity are collections of cognitive traits.  Both are accompanied by personality traits which may be a direct outcome of particular cognitive traits, and some of which are considered a possible prerequisite for the fulfillment of potential. The abilities which enable creativity in very different domains are all brain-based, some more visual or physical, but all depending, at least to some extent, on cognition.

If most of the world’s population was color-blind, a color-blind expert on art would be entirely possible. This expert could talk sensibly about the history or art, about various artists and their styles, and even about the elements that go into a work of art. He could discuss balance, line, contrast, and innumerable other details that make up a painting. What he wouldn’t be able to discuss, except in a very limited way, is color. Indeed, if a uniquely-sighted artist created a painting out of small dots of color, the expert wouldn’t even be able to identify the objects in the painting. He would condemn the canvas as a chaotic mass of meaningless dots, and most of the world’s art admirers would agree with him. In such a world, the artist who developed pointillism would have been laughed out of the art world and promptly forgotten.

Protection of professional reputation and career, along with biases in education and training are two significant reasons for the continued lack of information about intellectual traits. But they may not even be the most important reasons. The most important is never, as far as I’m aware, discussed publicly. We could call it the color-blind expert syndrome, and  I’ve found it everywhere in the literature.

Ellen Winner has written about gifted children and about art and by all professional measures, qualifies as an expert in those areas. Yet these quotes from her book Gifted Children: Myths and Realities strongly call into question any experiential understanding. Of one gifted child, she said “... he described pictures that he discerned in the grain of wood, and angels and harps in the shapes of clouds — further examples of a need to create visual stimulation for himself.” And of another: “...I would say that underlying all his behavior was a desire to make his environment stimulating. This explains his persistent questions, his creation of math problems, his scientific theorizing, and his omnivorous reading.”

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Things I've been thinking about lately: cognitive complexity, information overload, the wisdom of crowds, the technological singularity. They're all related. The problem is to figure out the relationships, and find the implications hiding at the deepest levels. Ideas can sometimes serve as metaphors for other ideas creating concepts that are larger and more inclusive than either of the originals.

It probably wasn't an accident that I discovered this article last night. I've been trying for years to find the right term for the kind of mind that goes beyond the usual conceptions of giftedness, and cognitive complexity is the perfect expression.

"Complexity refers to the extent to which an individual or organization differentiates and integrates an event. Differentiation is the number of distinctions or separate elements (i.e., factors, variables) into which an event is analyzed. Integration refers to the connections or relationships among these elements.

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I've been having a problem with this blog that's all too similar to the problem I used to have with people. Before I learned about intelligence and intellectual giftedness I wondered why most of the people around me seemed so stupid, why they didn't see things that were obvious, why they couldn't figure things out for themselves, why they were completely uninterested in learning anything that was a challenge, that would be useful to them, that would make their lives more interesting. Why was their thinking so limited, in so many ways? Eventually, as I learned more about them, I expected less from them, but that still left me thinking that if I could just find people with my kind of mind, the problem of intellectual companionship would cease to exist.

That didn't happen. Starting with MENSA and similar organizations, I found that high IQ didn't guarantee a commitment to learning, to the search for facts, for clarity, and understanding. It didn't guarantee a sensitivity to the world's complexity or an awareness of the patterns and cycles that dominate human life. Too often, I found myself asking the same question about those with high IQs that I had asked about the general run of people I met: Why are they so stupid?

You can probably see where this is going. Throughout the months of posting to this blog, the question has popped into my head over and over again: why can't they figure all this out for themselves? Why am I bothering to explain things about giftedness that should be perfectly obvious to the gifted? But that's mostly on the days when I wonder if being gifted even really matters, for most of us.

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