Catherine Cox (1926)
John Stewart Mill had the top IQ of 190-200 from a sample of 300
| Area of Excellence | IQ |
| Philosophers | 170 |
| Writers and Revolutionary Statesmen | 160 |
| Scientists and other statesmen | 155 |
| Religious Leaders | 150 |
| Musicians | 145 |
| Artists | 140 |
| Soldiers | 125 |
McCurdy (1957)
Looking at Cox's top 20, 14 showed unusual parental attention.
Most were the eldest
11 never married
Most spent their childhood cut off from ordinary children
Geschwind -Exposure to high levels of testosterone in foetal life slows the development of the left hemisphere, leaving the right to flourish. (See this New Scientist Article) Also see Sperry.
Cranberg and Albert (1988) argue for a right hemisphere specialization in Chess.
Children have:
Renzulli, Reis and Smith (1981)say that a teacher can recognize a gifted child if the child satisfies three criteria:
Between 3 and 5% of the population are estimated to be gifted by the above criteria. (Marland 1972). There are not enough special programs for this number though (Harrington, Harrington & Karns 1991). Renzulli (1982) puts the estimate as high as 20%.
Students satisfying Renzulli et al's, (1981) criteria can have access to enrichment materials, and can drop out at any time. This involves the upper 25% of students.
Stanley's (1976) acceleration programme is primarily for maths.
Argument against acceleration is that it removes children from their peers. This could lead to the child experiencing social problems. Janos & Robinson, (1985) conclude, however, that most acceleration programmes do not lead to negative social or emotional consequences.
Hothousing
Terman (1918) Father taught his infant daughter to read using operant conditioning. Martha at 24 months had a vocabulary of 200 words and at 26½ months had a vocabulary of 700 words.
The Polgar sisters, Zsusza, Zsafia and Judit were emersed in chess by their father. All are strong prodigies, expected (in 1988) to become grandmasters (Reuben, 1988) (Refer back to what was said earlier about there being few women who succeed in chess)
Some people say any child can be a genius, but it is more likely that the performance of many children can be enhanced, and some will become exceptional.
Gallagher and Coché (1987) argue that many parents overstructure infant learning, reducing the opportunity for exploratory play - important for later intellectual achievements.
Individual Child (the centre of the concentric circles)
Child prodigies - Ability and motivation - parents usually have to ask the child to stop.
Many children have ability but little motivation, and therefore fail to become prodigies.
Young progidies have confidence and do not question, but at adolescence they have less confidence.
Possible reasons:
This loss of confidence at adolescence ihas been termed the 'mid-life crisis' by Bamberger (1962).
Mentors have a close relationship with the child serving as a role model, consultant, advisor, source of wisdom, even a sort of protector.
Mentor 'encourages and supports the other in expressing and testing his/her ideas and in thinking things through. He/She protects the individual from the reactions of peers and superiors long enough for the person to try out ideas and modify them'.
Parents, Sports Coach.
A tutor teaches one on one. Tutors are able to raise the standard of an average student to the 98th percentile (Bloom 1984). Tutors gain an insight to how children think, which will help them in their whole-class teaching.
Individual Education Plans also are a good idea for gifted and special needs children, and are used widely.
Special schools can be used, as well as Saturday classes, but mainstreaming is the norm now. this means the classroom teacher has to know what they can do to help gifted children
Hemery (1986) 63 world top performers studied
Two-thirds felt they would not have reached the top without the help of their coach.
Breskvar (1987) taught Boris Becker and Steffi Graf.
At age 6 Becker went for every ball even if it meant throwing himself on the ground like a goal keeper. Coached almost every day from the age of six. The technique involved both theory and intuition to suit the particular player.
Benjamin B;oom and Lauren Susniak (1985) studied 20 outstanding performers. Pianists, Sculptors, Swimmers, Tennis Players, Mathematicians, Neurologists.
Great chess players, however, do not necessarily practice. Copablanca beat his father at age 4, 2 days after viewing his first game.
Role Models
Harold Wilson stood on the steps of No 10 when a boy (this is not allowed now!)
(Feldman and Goldsmith, 1989) - Teacher must cope with the 'extreme form of decalage between the prodigies' - special areas of talent and their more age-typical overall functioning'. It is important for the teacher to be able to understand the emotional needs of a child as well as being able to give sufficient guidance to enable the child's special skill to flourish.
Institutional Enablers (the outer layer of the concentric circles)
Child prodigies are found in chess, music, writing, painting, maths, computer programming,
Not in bridge, medicine, economics or philosophy.
Reasons:
Early literary works of children are strong in formal properties and weak in substance.
Randy McDaniel - recreated Victorian prose - the stories lacked significant plot or characyter development (Feldman and Goldsmith, 1986).
American children are not encouraged in chess, whereas Icelandic children are well supoorted with a network of lessons, clubs and tournaments.
American children are encouraged in Maths and Science.
Kitano (1991) minority groups are underrepresented in gifted programs.
Use of SOMPA helps detect gifted children of minorities (Matthew et al (1992)).
Many ethnic minority children overlooked because they are underachievers (Wilgosh, 1991).
Few children with behavioural problems are found in programmes for the gifted (Urban 1991)
.
Shaklee (1992) four reasons why gifted youngsters are overlooked:
Most states in America give low priority to gifted children, and ethnic minorities were generally overlooked.
Crystallising Experience (Walters and Gardner 1986)
A turning point.
Circumstances combine - inborn talent, self teaching, and proper exposure to a set of materials in a particular way.
Bertrand Russell began reading Euclid at 11 with his brother as tutor. He said "This was one of the great events of my life, as dazzling as first love, I had not imagined that there was anything so delicious in the world" (Russell 1967).
The Crystallising experience is probably not causal.
A teacher might, without thinking, believe that by teaching many facts creativity will also develop. There are specific things that teachers can do to promote creative thinking.
Producing many ideas without evaluation can produce 23% to 177% better quality ideas than just only trying to produce 'good' ideas (Parnes 1962).
Four rules.
Parnes (1967) nine actions that can be applied to a variety of problems.
The leader of the group does not give the problem, but rather an abstraction of the problem. For example, the leader asks about how many different ways can things be stored. Later, restrictions are imposed, like the objects are large. Eventually the full problem can be presented, such as storing cars in big cities.
Originated by Fritz Zwicky of Aero-Jet Corporation.
Problem split into parts, and then items are re-combined. For example, to invent a new form of transport, one could consider the type of vehicle (e.g. Sling, Cart, Rocket, Box, Wheeled, Boat, etc.), how it is powered (e.g. Air, Water, Electric, Horse, Man, Atomic), and the medium through which the vehicle travels (e.g. Air, Water, Oil, Land, Tube). The elements are put back together to get Sling, Electric and Oil, for example. You now have an electric powered sling that catapults the vehicle along a well-oiled rail, perhaps!
Lateral thinking Vs vertical thinking (de Bono, 1976).
Conceptual Models are a form of advance organiser (see Ausubel's theory) that helps students to understand a lecture or read passage. For example, radar could be split into 5 main ideas: Transmission, Reflection, Reception, Measurement, Conversion. Children allowed to study this model, given pictorially, were found to recall 57% more of the important facts. Their solutions to a related problem were 83% more accurate. This finding is evidence of creativity.
Mayer (1989) Conceptual models increase recall of important concepts, but decrease rote, or verbatim recall.
Good models will:
[Note, when memorising these points, the above all begin with C!]
"Better learning, will not come from finding better ways for the teacher to instruct, but from giving the learner better opportunities to construct" - Papert (1990). Conceptual models, computer programs (e.g. logo), drawing boxes and arrows, etc., allow children to construct their own mental models.
Teachers who encourage creativity and giftedness believe in:
Haddon and Lytton (1968) found that informal schools produced higher creativity compared with formal schools.
Clements (1991) found that unstructured classes where children used logo (a computer program) fostered higher levels of creativity.
Adams (1968) found that students tested under non-competitive conditions score higher on tests of spontaneous flexibility, compared with those tested under competitive conditions. If the examiner was warm and friendly then all students produced more creative results.
Students taught in groups who are only awarded for group achievement have:
Early study Terman (1925). Longitudinal study of gifted children with IQ of 140 or more on Terman-Merill Intelligence Test. Participants followed up by Oden (1968). Most successful members of group had less illness and greater stability in the home during childhood. Success was operationalised as professional productivity, responsibility held, influence and authority over others, honours and income. Many came from professional parents with a positive attitude to education who gave much encouragement to their children. There was a greater emphasis on success during early childhood.
Roe (1953) and MacKinnon (1961) confirm these findings using retrospective studies. It has been found that some professional groups (psychologists, architects, biologists and anthropologists) are characterised by people who came from permissive middle class homes with emotional ties that were a little strained!
Mackinnon found that creative architects had parents that had an 'extraordinary respect for the child and confidence in his (sic) ability to do what was appropriate'.
Roe found that physicists and mathematicians had the most distress in their childhood. The usual forms of distress being parental separation, strict and conventional upbringing, and illness. Roe concluded that they are choosing careers that involve convergent thinking, which makes up for the lack of security they felt in childhood!
Cattell (1963) found that eminent academic researchers were reserved, intelligent, dominant, serious, emotionally sensitive, radical, and self-sufficient; In short, an introverted personality.
In general creative people are single-minded, stubborn, non-conformist and persistent in imaginative tasks. They are tolerant to ambiguity and enjoy dilemmas. They take risks with their ideas.
Harvey (1961) found that the higher level of abstraction that a person can achieve when problem solving, the more creative are her solutions.
Students note that these longitudinal and retrospective studies are dated. Can the findings be applied to creative people today?
Early ripe, Early rot (Montour 1976, 1977)
William James Sidis read English at 3, Russian, French and German at 5, Before the age of eight he passed the entrance exam for MIT, at 11 entered Harvard, at 12 (in 1910) he gave a lecture. However, he failed to complete his degree, failed to keep his teching posts, and ended his life performing menial work. He died at the age of 46, unemployed and destitute. He suffered from emotional problems, probably caused by an affectionless and demanding childhood, and also by the way he was hounded by the press at the instigation of his father.
Often early achievement ends in unremarkable later attainment.
Terman (1925) 1,500 gifted children studied; none achieved the very highest attainment level (eg Nobel prize, etc).
Possible reasons:
Normal in all other respects?
4 gifted children studied who had an adult ability in a specific domain, but significant decalage in other tests of formal operation - meaning they were at a normal level for these tests (Gardner and Hatch).
Their talents follow the normal sequence of development, but the child prodigy puts in much time to developing the talents.
INNATE
GIFTS AND TALENTS: REALITY OR MYTH?
Michael J. A. Howe
Jane W. Davidson
John A. Sloboda
Banks. S. & Thompson. C., Educational Psychology , p411-412, West, 1995.
Child. D., Psychology and the Teacher (3rd Ed) , p199-200, p218-220, Holt, 1981.
Howe. M.J.A., Encouraging the Development of Exceptional Skills and Talents,pp17-48, BPS, 1990.
Lefrançois. G., Psychology for Teaching (8th Ed.) , Chapter 8, Wadsworth, 1994.
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