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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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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