High Cognitive Minds

There’s a short discussion in the forum’s Welcome to High Cognitive Minds thread that keeps tugging at me, and this post is partly a response. Mer said “There aren't a lot of personal stories that detail other people's experiences as intellectual outliers living outside of academia. Where are they?” One of the ways we learn about ourselves in by reading the experiences of others like us. And Mer’s right--there are darned few examples of highly gifted people writing about their own development. I can think of two reasons for that. The first is the one I mentioned in my reply to her--we tend to be private people. Given that introversion is more likely as IQ goes up, that makes sense. But the other reason may be more influential.

We’ve learned not to talk about our intelligence, our knowledge, our hopes and ambitions. We learned that lesson in a variety of ways--by being ignored, criticized, or made fun of. By being accused of snobbery, showing off, or of thinking that we know everything. For many of us, school taught us much more about the need to stay hidden than it did about developing our abilities or finding a path that we could devote ourselves to. If you’re accomplished and famous, it’s okay to write about your childhood, the books you loved to read, and the strange ideas that you had about how the world worked. If you’re not famous, your autobiography would get comments like “Why should we be interested in this nobody?” Or “A boring display of ego.” And then it would sink like a stone, going into the remainder bins, and then off to the shredder.

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“…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.

For a long time, I’ve noticed that people who talk about their giftedness tend to fall into two categories as they describe themselves. One group says that they know they learn faster and have better memories than most, but don’t see that as a reason to consider themselves gifted. The other group usually knows from a fairly early age that they think differently, perceive the world differently, and have different motivations for what they do. But they judge that difference as what is wrong with them, rather than as a sign of giftedness.

I’ve always thought of these two types just as variations in the way that individuals define themselves when insufficient information is available to them. Giftedness is rarely defined or explained, so the natural tendency is to interpret it on a purely personal level. Now I see that the two very different sets of responses go beyond the personal. Instead, they point to very different types of intelligence, corresponding to the “academically gifted” and the “intellectually gifted.” Those terms are applied to school children, but what they mean is still relevant to adults.

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Jacques Barzun's book, The House of Intellect, is one of those that inspires if you're willing to give it the slow, thoughtful reading it demands. Published in 1959, some of the references are dated, and much of it seems to come from an entirely different world than the one we live in now. It's a measure of how much things can change in such a short time.

Even given the current cutting back and outright axing of arts programs in schools, and the near abandonmnent of foreign languages the following paragraphs ring true today. They particularly highlight one of my ongoing concerns, that even the most highly gifted came out of school and college poorly equipped for any kind of intellectual life. There may be less lip service paid to creativity in schools these days, but not because it is being served better; there is simply no time for such "frills." But the self-esteem movement charges on, with the result that our bright young people give more attention to how they feel than what they know.  

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Linda Silverman, whose website, Gifted Development Center, is focused primarily on gifted children, is also responsible for Advanced Development, a series of journals about gifted adults.  Out of curiosity, I recently took a look at the two issues I own, and the list of issues to date. The titles of the ten issues which have been published so far are:

Volume 1 - Positive Disintegration
Volume 2 - Models of Integration
Volume 3 - The Possible Human
Volume 4 - The Self
Volume 5 - Valuing the Feminine
Volume 6 - Becoming Authentic
1995 Special Edition on Gifted Adults
Volume 7 - A Kaleidoscope of Creativity
Volume 8 - Counseling Gifted Adults
Volume 9 - Spirituality and Giftedness
Volume 10 - Exploring Intuition

What is remarkable is that in 17 years, (the first journal was published in 1989), there has not been a single issue devoted to intellectual giftedness. Is it possible that this subject has been addressed in issue 7, on creativity? The table of contents lists three poems, a soliloquy, a short story, and seven articles. Two of the articles, "Nuance and Omnivalence in the Creative Mind," and "Intellect as Prelude: The Potential for Higher Level in the Gifted,"  sound as if they might touch on intellectual giftedness, but I suspect it's no more than a touch.

I've been exploring this issues for several years, and my frustration is now mixed with a sense of irony. Over and over, gifted children are held up as a resource, the potential solvers of problems that baffle humanity. Yet there is virtually no interest in their intellectual development or concern about the effect of that lack on the adults that gifted children eventually become.