High Cognitive Minds

I’ve come to believe that intellectually gifted children should start learning about human psychology at a fairly early age. But I wonder what the effect would have been if my first exposure to the subject had been a school textbook. Maybe it would have turned me off the subject completely, or it might have led me in the right direction without years of thrashing around without any sense of direction. Who knows?

It’s a truism that many psychologists start out with themselves as their first subject of interest. Which makes my current reading somewhat serendipitous. In the midst of trying to write this post, I started reading Wisdom, Intelligence, and Creativity, Synthesized, by psychologist Robert J. Sternberg. In giving a brief rundown on what led him to psychology, he turns out to be a perfect example of the truism.

His path started in elementary school, when his extreme test anxiety resulted in a low IQ score. As he put it: “For three years, my teachers thought me stupid, and I obliged, pleasing them by confirming their self-fulfilling prophecies for me.” But his fourth-grade teacher believed in him, and so he started believing in himself and became an “A” student. “By age 13, I was determined to understand why I was now achieving at high levels despite my low IQ...” That led to his learning about IQ testing, and tracking down a Stanford-Binet test and administering it to his classmates. He got in trouble for that, but that didn’t matter, because by then he knew where he was going.

Click to read more ...

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 

Or not so brief. I'm having a hard time thinking about giftedness issues lately -- just too many other things buzzing around in my head. But I will get back to the There to Here series.

In the meantime... I just dropped into the Davidson forum, as I do now and then and discovered that Linda Silverman's Upside Down Brilliance is now out of print, and people are jacking up the price outrageously. I bought a copy some time back, and now I'm thinking seriously about copying the material I'll need for references and then putting it up for sale on half.com.

Since I'm not teaching or raising kids, most of the book is really no use to me. I never pass up a chance to turn over an investment at a profit, but I hate gouging people. Any ideas about a fair price, keeping in mind that it's currently going for $60.00 and up?