Straight Dope Message Board

[Lumpy]

The precocious children who have masters degrees by the time they're twelve. Do they have high IQs and exceptional accomplishments as adults, or are they simply reaching their maximum potential faster?

[engineer_comp_geek]

Generally speaking, your IQ tends to increase with age, then may decrease in old age due to dementia and other issues. Children with high IQs don't typically peak early. More typically, their IQ continues to rise at about the same percentage as everyone else. There is some variation though. As with almost everything, there's always some outliers on the charts.

This may surprise some people, but precocious children often do not do well as adults. When they are young, they often focus too much on their talents and not enough on social skills. They often have difficulty making friends since while average people can find numerous other average people to hang out with, precocious people are a rarity and have a lot of difficulty finding others like them to be friends with. They also often push themselves too hard and end up burning out.

So that kid that got his masters at 12 may not necessarily end up a successful adult, even if he or she does still have a high IQ as an adult. IQ is not an accurate predictor of success in life.

[Omar Little]

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeands...uses-prodigies

Andrew Halliburton, 23, began studying maths with secondary school pupils at 8

Andrew did Mensa puzzles in newspapers and played on the computer in his bedroom. "I feel like my childhood was sort of wasted," he says. "I didn't really get to go out as much as other kids, but I did enjoy the typical stuff little boys did." Like riding bikes? He pauses. "I never did learn to ride a bike."

<snip>

"Uni was the one time I had a bit of trouble making friends, which was strange because I was with my own age group."

He dropped out in his first year and got a job at McDonald's. Out of place, and unsure of what to do with his life, he nearly got fired. "What could be worse than getting fired from McDonald's?" he says. Five years later, he is still there, a humble crew member who sometimes enjoys the surprised look on customers' faces when he does the sums in his head rather than going to the till.

[sitchensis]

From what i've read about very young children, milestones like walking, talking, numbers and abc's aren't a predictor or any future intelligence.

[LSLGuy]

Mensa is full of people who tested high as kids and ended up underachieving as adults. Very few of them were Masters candidates at 12, but many where scholastic overachievers through HS & perhaps into college. Then their personality unbalance began to hold them back.

[Gary T]

Originally Posted by sitchensis

From what i've read about very young children, milestones like walking, talking, numbers and abc's aren't a predictor or any future intelligence.

There seems to be a portion of parents who worry terribly if their child is later than average on reaching some of these, yet there are any number of cases where the "late bloomers" do just fine. One example is the child who hasn't said his first word yet (or more than a small handful of words) at some almost alarming point, only to start speaking in complete sentences.

[kunilou]

Think of it like sports. You have kids who are bigger, faster, stronger, more coordinated. As you move up each level, some succeed and move up, some peak and go no further, some can't do well at that level, and some simply lose interest.

Looking back at my elementary and high school graduating class, there is absolutely no relationship between the raw intelligence some kids had and what they did with it.

I was friends with one kid who got straight A's throughout elementary school, went to an honors high school, got straight A's there and then failed calculus. He said he simply wasn't able to adjust his thinking that way (the first time around, eventually he mastered it.)

[Chronos]

Quoth engineer_comp_geek:

Generally speaking, your IQ tends to increase with age, then may decrease in old age due to dementia and other issues.

Under what definition? Under the usual definitions, 100 is the average IQ for any given age group, and an individual's IQ will tend to remain roughly constant throughout life.

[Blake]

Originally Posted by Chronos

Under what definition? Under the usual definitions, 100 is the average IQ for any given age group, and an individual's IQ will tend to remain roughly constant throughout life.

Age group being the key. If the age group is 18-95 or 55-95 then there will be an increase in IQ with age, then a decline in IQ associated with senility.

[Chronos]

18-95 is not a group of people all of whom are the same age.

[Wendell Wagner]

I've been trying for a while to find some actual statistics on how well child prodigies do as adults. I can't find any such numbers. If someone else can find a scientific study of the question (and, no, just an article about how some prodigies do well and some do poorly isn't good enough), please let me know. It appears to me from a quick examination of articles on prodigies that posters in this thread are slightly exaggerating the extent to which child prodigies don't always do well. It appears that on average child prodigies do better as adults than people who are considered as average achievers as children. Yes, some prodigies don't do well as adults, some do about average, some do very well, and a few turn out to be the best in their chosen fields. This doesn't mean that the majority of the people who turn out to be the best in their chosen fields were child prodigies. In fact, it appears that the majority of the best in each field are those who were considered somewhere between average and very good (but not prodigies) as children. If you're a child prodigy, it appears that you will have a slightly better chance to be a top person in whatever field you end up in, but it isn't remotely certain that you will.

[puddleglum]

There was a study that gave IQ tests to 11 year olds and then gave them again 60 years later. The correlation between scores was .66 which is very high. So smart children tend to be smart adults. This is less true for younger children as peoples brains can develop at different speeds. As for exceptional accomplishments IQ does correlate with accomplishments but the correlation is far from perfect.

[bump]

Originally Posted by kunilou

Think of it like sports. You have kids who are bigger, faster, stronger, more coordinated. As you move up each level, some succeed and move up, some peak and go no further, some can't do well at that level, and some simply lose interest.

I don't think you can really use that analogy.

I think the bigger thing is that when everyone's in school, there's a more or less uniform set of things that everyone in that particular age cohort is interested in, with clearly defined success/failure criteria. So intelligence is a definite asset in that situation- smart kids will tend to make As more than others.

But as you get older, success is defined differently. Is a child prodigy who decided to find a satisfying job with low time committments and moderate pay, so he can concentrate on his family and personal interests less successful than being a frantically publishing professor at a world-class university, with all the stress that entails? Is that guy less successful than being an executive who works 80 hour weeks and has no time for home and family? That guy with the job may be the smartest of the bunch in more than one way, if you ask me.

There seems to be a perception that very intelligent children are somehow failures if they don't go on to be internet billionaires at 30, or aren't NASA rocket scientists, or working at Bell Labs or for Elon Musk at SpaceX or something. This isn't the case at all.

[Blake]

Originally Posted by Chronos

18-95 is not a group of people all of whom are the same age.

Neither is 19-25. Neither is 18-19. neither is 18-18.5.

What;s your point?IQ is applied to age groups. 18-95 is an age group, just as 18-18.5 is.

[dropzone]

Originally Posted by engineer_comp_geek

This may surprise some people, but precocious children often do not do well as adults.

Who would it surprise? It's a cliche!

[MikeS]

There's also the strange and sad tale of William Sidis, whom the Master wrote about some years ago:

Originally Posted by Cecil Adams

Sidis, celebrated as a prodigy in his youth, produced virtually nothing of consequence as an adult. One of his major contributions to world literature was a book about streetcar transfers, which a biographer described as "the most boring book ever written." A few have professed to find deep meaning in this work and believe Sidis's many unpublished writings would yield great truths if only we lesser folk (well, you lesser folk) had the wit to understand them. But the more common explanation is that he was a gifted lad who was pushed too far too fast.

He also has a Wikipedia article, which notes that many of the claims about Sidis's intelligence are suspect. So who knows?

[Spice Weasel]

This reminds me of a thread I started years ago: "Gifted Children" - Where are you now?

My theory was somewhat different, as I predicted ''Gifted Children'' would have more or less the same outcome as normal children who did better than average in school. With a few exceptions (one person was an astronaut) I turned out to be right, based on the narrow anecdotal experience of people on the Dope.

And yes, there was the inevitable IQ pissing match.

[Stranger On A Train]

Originally Posted by Blake

Neither is 19-25. Neither is 18-19. neither is 18-18.5.

What;s your point?IQ is applied to age groups. 18-95 is an age group, just as 18-18.5 is.

Typical age groupings classify people (in statistical terms, putting them in "bins") as being in a comparable state of development and maturity with respect to the issue at hand. A grouping of 18-95 is essentially meaningless if the question is about development of a characteristic such as intelligence after adolescent development.

With respect to the claim that IQ increases with age, this probably says more about how we attempt to measure an inherent quality of intelligence with application-based testing. That is, it shows that there is a significant component of cultural awareness that contributes to performance on IQ tests, even though neurologically the plasticity, cognative flexibility, and memory retention/recall of the brain declines measureably with age. In other words, as a subject gains more knowledge they are better able to anticipate correct responses on an intelligence test even though their. brains are not as flexible and adaptable as they were in childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood.

Getting back to the question posed by the o.p., the developmental disconnect aspect of high intellect and its resulting impact on socialization, especially on children who are highly focused on learning a technical or analytical skill area such as mathematics or chess, as been touched upon, but there is another factor as well, which is the skills and abilities that are amazing in a young child are much less so in a functioning adult. For instance, I learned to read at a very young age (I'm not going to "stealth brag" but it was significantly younger than my peers, although probably not achieving the 'genius' level) and I maintained 99+ percentile scores in reading comprehension based on standardized testing throughout primary and secondary school. While that was beneficial in being able to spend more time in early development absorbing advanced material, by the time I was in my late teens or early twenties my peers had caught up with me, and so it was no longer an especially impressive skill. My nearly editic memory (able to memorize large passages and arbitary strings of numbers) was useful in school, albeit mostly to allow me to spend a minimal amount of time memorizing mostly useless information while allowing me to spend time studying what I was most interested in, which was also mostly useless but still more entertaining, became largely a party trick, especially now that information is so readily available given nearly constant access to the Internet; being able to recall every film role of an actor or quote soliloquies from Shakespeare is now the purview of any schmuck with a smartphone. Dougie Houser, M.D. is amazing because he's a 16 year old that went to medical school (as ridiculous as that premise is) but by the time he's 35 he's only going to be a little in advance of his medical peers in terms of intellectual and professional development.

On the other hand, most of my peers spent the years that I spent literally reading my way through a library developing social skills and connections which is an area of development that I struggle with at even a basic level today even with substantial effort. I've certainly been bypassed in work and personal arenas by people who are not as capable analytically, have less intellectual curiosity, and in general are less capable, but who are emotionally and socially savvy enough to not routinely make social gaffs like correcting a boss or droning on about some arcane aspect of discrete mathematics on a date. Society needs people with strong technical skills and knowledge to do the intellectual heavy lifting, but those people are rarely in charge and often poorly suited when they are promoted into leadership positions because they lack the essential knowledge of or respect for social niceities.

This isn't universally true, of course; Lazlo Polgar and his wife insisted that their daughters (all world-class chess players in a field dominated by men) have other social activities and interests even as Polgar taught them to play chess from an early age (a deliberate experiment and demonstration of the trainability of intellectual capacity), and all three women are relatively socially normal unlike many other chess masters. It is possible to be both intellectually capable and socially adept, but that probably requires parents and other social mentors to help direct and balance out the intellectual proclivities of supranormally intelligent children. All of this is notwithstanding abnormal pathologies like autistic spectrum disorders which socially isolate people regardless of intellect.

Stranger

[Francis Vaughan]

OTOH, there are examples of child prodigies that turn out rather well.

Terry Tao is the local boy made good.

Being local means an Adelaide boy, and for anyone who lives here, they know how connected the city is. My aunt was a midwife, and delivered Terry. A number of my colleagues had occasion to teach Terry when he attended university as a very young student. He is, by all accounts, a really nice, well adjusted, bona-fidé genius. And has been since childhood.

OTOH, the world is littered whose who didn't continue with the promise. Musicians especially.

[lynne-42]

One study on the theme of achievements of girls labelled gifted at school was by Barbara Kerr, "Smart Girls, Gifted Women".

The blurb of Kerr's book:

"It was the 10-year reunion of all those gifted kids who attended the school for high achievers in St. Louis, an event that has changed the life of the author. Their early talents and intellect portended excellence, success, prestige, perhaps greatness, but most of the women in the group had settled into mediocre jobs, performing uninspiring chores or were unemployed, happy in traditional roles. And they were barely approaching the age of 30. As memories of that night's party faded, Kerr set off on a new path--studying and researching the lives of gifted women, and counseling gifted girls and their adult counterparts. The Guidance Laboratory for Gifted and Talented at the University of Nebraska was thus born, directed by Dr. Kerr. In this title, she offers thoughtful suggestions for parents of gifted girls from preschool through graduate school."

https://www.amazon.com/Smart-Girls-G.../dp/0910707073

I did a course with her and was a specialist teacher of gifted education for mathematically advanced students. Most of my students seem to have gone on to very successful lives (not taking personal credit, I was just part of their much bigger world) - but they were not at the prodigy level, just found normal classwork very easy and so were extended and given enrichment work. I suspect that is a much more comfortable level of academic ability.

[Surreal]

Most of the evidence suggests that "gifted" often grow to be exceptional adults, at least in terms of academic and financial success:

http://www.nature.com/news/how-to-ra...ildren-1.20537

“Whether we like it or not, these people really do control our society,” says Jonathan Wai, a psychologist at the Duke University Talent Identification Program in Durham, North Carolina, which collaborates with the Hopkins centre. Wai combined data from 11 prospective and retrospective longitudinal studies, including SMPY, to demonstrate the correlation between early cognitive ability and adult achievement. “The kids who test in the top 1% tend to become our eminent scientists and academics, our Fortune 500 CEOs and federal judges, senators and billionaires,” he says.

So the notion that "gifted" children aren't any more likely to be successful adults is basically a myth.

[Cartoonacy]

Originally Posted by Blake

Age group being the key. If the age group is 18-95 or 55-95 then there will be an increase in IQ with age, then a decline in IQ associated with senility.

No, IQ doesn't increase appreciably with age. IQ is typically defined as mental age divided by physical age, times 100. Since physical age is the denominator, then mental age would have to increase dramatically to make the quotient increase.

[elfkin477]

Originally Posted by sitchensis

From what i've read about very young children, milestones like walking, talking, numbers and abc's aren't a predictor or any future intelligence.

I've heard that reaching physical milestones early, like rolling over, sitting up, walking etc. are indicators of the kid having ADHD, and I wonder if there's any validity there. This certainly seems to be the case with my brother and I who met them all quite early, and were extremely hyper active: I was diagnosed with hyperactivity before kindergarten, and girls tend not to be diagnosed with ADHD anywhere near as young as boys.

If it is true, it wouldn't be unique in early milestones indicating problems rather than giftedness - it's pretty well known that being hyperlexic, that is reading really well at an unbelievably young age (like age two and being able to full read sentences in books without pictures) is indicative of autism rather than being a child genius.

As for not ridiculously early readers, a study I read said that they'd been disappointed that three and four-year-olds who could read were tracked at age five most "only" read as well as a typical six-year-old or some typical seven-year-olds. A year is one-fifth these kids' entire lives, and that's a not impressive outcome? Sheesh.

[nearwildheaven]

Originally Posted by puddleglum

There was a study that gave IQ tests to 11 year olds and then gave them again 60 years later. The correlation between scores was .66 which is very high. So smart children tend to be smart adults. This is less true for younger children as peoples brains can develop at different speeds. As for exceptional accomplishments IQ does correlate with accomplishments but the correlation is far from perfect.

"Accomplishment" is a very subjective term. Here's an example: The smartest kid I grew up with said he wanted to be a truck driver, and was endlessly razzed for it (I wouldn't call it bullying). He ended up getting an associate's degree in diesel mechanics, and has taught that subject at a community college for about 25 years. That school probably produces the best diesel mechanics anywhere, and he would have been a dismal failure as, say, a doctor or lawyer.

[nearwildheaven]

Originally Posted by LSLGuy

Mensa is full of people who tested high as kids and ended up underachieving as adults. Very few of them were Masters candidates at 12, but many where scholastic overachievers through HS & perhaps into college. Then their personality unbalance began to hold them back.

In many cases, you are right, or they have substance abuse or mental health issues that create roadblocks. They're just like the other 98%, only with higher IQs.

(I'm a life member. )

[nearwildheaven]

Originally Posted by elfkin477

I've heard that reaching physical milestones early, like rolling over, sitting up, walking etc. are indicators of the kid having ADHD, and I wonder if there's any validity there. This certainly seems to be the case with my brother and I who met them all quite early, and were extremely hyper active: I was diagnosed with hyperactivity before kindergarten, and girls tend not to be diagnosed with ADHD anywhere near as young as boys.

If it is true, it wouldn't be unique in early milestones indicating problems rather than giftedness - it's pretty well known that being hyperlexic, that is reading really well at an unbelievably young age (like age two and being able to full read sentences in books without pictures) is indicative of autism rather than being a child genius.

As for not ridiculously early readers, a study I read said that they'd been disappointed that three and four-year-olds who could read were tracked at age five most "only" read as well as a typical six-year-old or some typical seven-year-olds. A year is one-fifth these kids' entire lives, and that's a not impressive outcome? Sheesh.

Reaching milestones out of order (like walking without crawling first) often indicates these issues and others.

[RivkahChaya]

Originally Posted by elfkin477

I've heard that reaching physical milestones early, like rolling over, sitting up, walking etc. are indicators of the kid having ADHD, and I wonder if there's any validity there. This certainly seems to be the case with my brother and I who met them all quite early, and were extremely hyper active: I was diagnosed with hyperactivity before kindergarten, and girls tend not to be diagnosed with ADHD anywhere near as young as boys.

Originally Posted by nearwildheaven

Reaching milestones out of order (like walking without crawling first) often indicates these issues and others.

Uneven development, like feeding oneself early, but speaking late, or reading words on a page that one does not use spontaneously, are the kinds of things that indicate a problem. Walking without crawling is not a problem, though. That was invented by a place called the Philadelphia Institutes for Achievement of Human Growth (the word "Growth" was later changed to "Potential"), founded in 1955 by Glenn Doman and Carl Delacato, which is a place of quackery that claims to be able to cure any brain "hurt" from Cerebral Palsy, to autism, to poor eyesight, through "patterning." They have people move a child's arms and legs through crawling motions almost literally all day, if a child can't crawl, and then have a child spend the rest of the day crawling around an indoor track, and occasionally brachiating or running around tracks if the child is able. It occupies a child's whole day, and school-aged children in the program usually need to be homeschooled to complete it. Read all about it in a book called No Time for Jello.

I have two cousins who both walked without crawling. One has a Ph.D in microbiology, and is in Texas, working on the Ebola vaccine; the other is a lawyer with the state of Illinois. None ever had any problems whatsoever, other than the younger one needing braces, and the older one being a little bit of an asshole, but he's our asshole, and we love him.

[DSeid]

Originally Posted by RivkahChaya

Uneven development, like feeding oneself early, but speaking late, or reading words on a page that one does not use spontaneously, are the kinds of things that indicate a problem. Walking without crawling is not a problem, though. ....

Even uneven development is only something that indicates a problem if it is quite dramatic, then, yes, it can be part of an autistic spectrum, but many other kids are overall average, just not average in any one thing. If they are a bit advanced in language for a while then they may be a bit behind in gross motor during that same time. There is really only so much developmental energy that gets divided into different buckets.


FWIW, circling back to giftedness, my suspicions in early childhood go up more based on being advanced in the never formerly codified humor milestones. Show me a kid who is laughing at things that most kids don't laugh at until they are older, or making funnies (sometimes a stretch at that point to call them "jokes") in nature ahead of their age, and that is a kid to expect to have giftedness issues. Likewise in the other direction even if they know their letters on time or early, don't hit those milestones and there may be problems to come even if they hit the others just fine.

Based on anecdotal experience though, no cite.

[Wendell Wagner]

Cartoonacy writes:

> IQ is typically defined as mental age divided by physical age, times 100.

It hasn't been defined that way for a long time. It's defined as fitting the scores on an I.Q. test to a normal curve. This is done so that someone with an average score on such a test would get a 100, and each standard deviation is equal to 15 points. The effect is the same though. Someone is compared with their peers. If you're 5 years old, you're compared with other 5-year-olds. If you're 10 years old, you're compared with other 10-year-olds. If you're an adult, you're compared with other adults. On average, you don't expect your I.Q. to go up or down as you age:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient

[Mighty_Girl]

Originally Posted by RivkahChaya

I have two cousins who both walked without crawling.

As another anecdotal data point, my daughter did not crawl at the average age for it. She seemed eager to move, but just couldn't figure it out. She was also a little behind in her gross motor skills, her fine motor skills were more than adequate though. She went from not crawling to walking right on time. Some people seemed alarmed by this, but she just inherited my total lack of sport talent.

What she got from me was the talent for languages (multilingual from the start, and ahead of our peers in vocabulary and sentence construction). We both also learned how to read well ahead of our classmates, and could bullshit our way out of not studying, most of the time.

Judging by where it led me, most of her classmates will catch up in high school, and she'll become a smart person, though definitely not a genius. I am fine with that.

[eclectic wench]

Originally Posted by DSeid

FWIW, circling back to giftedness, my suspicions in early childhood go up more based on being advanced in the never formerly codified humor milestones. Show me a kid who is laughing at things that most kids don't laugh at until they are older, or making funnies (sometimes a stretch at that point to call them "jokes") in nature ahead of their age, and that is a kid to expect to have giftedness issues. Likewise in the other direction even if they know their letters on time or early, don't hit those milestones and there may be problems to come even if they hit the others just fine.

Based on anecdotal experience though, no cite.

This makes total sense to me. Humour is based on juxtaposition and incongruity - in other words, it's based on understanding the connections between things, and actually creating connections, rather than just having a handle on the things themselves. It makes a lot of sense that kids who are making spontaneous connections at an early age would turn out to be smart.

[RivkahChaya]

Originally Posted by elfkin477

If it is true, it wouldn't be unique in early milestones indicating problems rather than giftedness - it's pretty well known that being hyperlexic, that is reading really well at an unbelievably young age (like age two and being able to full read sentences in books without pictures) is indicative of autism rather than being a child genius.

Hyperlexia of autism is usually an isolated skill, and as such, it presents as a savant skill: children who have it are often behind in other areas. They also often obsess over written words: they can't, for example, walk past a PSA poster without reading the whole thing, and it makes taking them out difficult. I knew one kid who recited the letters and numbers on every license plate and read every bumper sticker if you walked him through a parking lot.

The kicker is that usually these kids don't even understand everything they read. They may be able to respond S-T-R-A-W-B-E-R-R-Y if you say "Spell strawberry," but not pick a strawberry out of a bowl of fruit.

So it's pretty easy to spot genuine prodigious reading from hyperlexia of autism. Kids who are early readers because they are bright (or because an older sibling was very determined, and sat them down and taught them), can actually use all the words they can read, and if they ever come across a word they don't know, will immediately want to know. Hyperlexic kids lack curiosity about what they are reading.

Now, there are plenty of bright kids who do not read early, and catch up to the early readers, but IME, children who read early generally remain good readers. They may not remain prodigious readers, and may not read several grades ahead for the rest of their school career, but they will probably remain at the top of their class as readers.

Single data point: I was an early reader who continued to read about two grades ahead, but I loved reading. I didn't try to be a good reader-- it was natural. However, there were other kids in my class in school who read as well as I did who were not early readers-- they picked it up very fast in first grade, but didn't read in kindergarten.

I was taught to read by my older cousin, who brought her readers homes, and just basically clued me into sounding out words, and then let me read her first grade readers. She also helped me out with sight words-- the words you just have to memorize. Once I could read about 80% of a text, I could figure out the rest.

By third grade, I was a very good reader, among the best four or five in my class, BUT, I don't think any of the others had been early readers, and we were indistinguishable.

[Machine Elf]

Originally Posted by engineer_comp_geek

This may surprise some people, but precocious children often do not do well as adults. When they are young, they often focus too much on their talents and not enough on social skills. They often have difficulty making friends since while average people can find numerous other average people to hang out with, precocious people are a rarity and have a lot of difficulty finding others like them to be friends with. They also often push themselves too hard and end up burning out.

I thought of this when I saw a news piece the other day about a 12YO freshman at Cornell. He said he is used to having older friends, but only if they like math. It seems likely he is less socially developed than his cohorts, and far less socially developed than the typical freshmen who are 6 years older than him. He's not even physically developed yet; casual group sports (softball, volleyball, soccer, etc.) are going to leave him mismatched relative to his classmates, and he's not going to fit in at the typical raucous college-student parties. If you're 21, you might get into some trouble for providing alcohol to an 18YO, but you're going to get into a shitload of trouble for providing alcohol to a 12YO. Not to mention the porn and/or explicit discussions of sexual topics that crop up from time to time ("Let's all watch 50 Shades of Grey; Jeremy, you should go do something else for a couple of hours."). He's going to be socially isolated, far more so than a typical college-age genius would be.

[RickJay]

Originally Posted by Stranger On A Train

For instance, I learned to read at a very young age (I'm not going to "stealth brag" but it was significantly younger than my peers, although probably not achieving the 'genius' level) and I maintained 99+ percentile scores in reading comprehension based on standardized testing throughout primary and secondary school. While that was beneficial in being able to spend more time in early development absorbing advanced material, by the time I was in my late teens or early twenties my peers had caught up with me, and so it was no longer an especially impressive skill.

I was hyperlexic as well, reading before three.

I have often used the analogy of racing in terms of how I compared to my peers. It's as if I was a 100-yard dash specialist in a 400-metre race; I was really, really far ahead for a long time, and if the race had ended at 7 years old I would have dusted the field, but it didn't, so the field caught up and I didn't even win a medal. At 4 years old I could read when essentially no other kids could. At 7 I could read better than any kid in my school. At 9, one or two kids had caught up to me. At 12, more, and by the end of high school I was not remotely close to being the smartest kid in my school.

Having said all that, I do have a good memory, and

1. The vast majority of kids I knew who were intellectually gifted stayed that way, more or less, and were academically successful. The very smartest were the most successful.

2. The vast majority of kids I knew who were dull-witted stayed that way.

[DSeid]

Just additional anecdotal points agreeing with RickJay ...

There were the two kids I knew in my school growing up who were clearly the genius kids. No I did not know their IQs, so take this for what it is worth, but they were clearly the cohort's outliers. They both went on to have very accomplished academic careers.

In my kids' classes - in a primary school system where nearly every parent thought their kid was "gifted" there was one I knew of who clearly really was. That cohort is now 30 and that kid did indeed grow up to be highly accomplished and functional.

Again, FWIW.

[Left Hand of Dorkness]

Originally Posted by Spice Weasel

This reminds me of a thread I started years ago: "Gifted Children" - Where are you now?

Heh--I'm six years late to correct a misconception, but better late than never. You mention in that OP that I was a "verified, legitimate child prodigy" at playing violin. I've told this story before (there's an article on child prodigies in a "Year in Medicine" volume from World Book Encyclopedia or something from the eighties, and it's illustrated with a photograph of me playing fiddle at a street fair), but I wasn't a child prodigy. I was just small and moppety and unafraid of crowds, and a good photographer happened to snap a picture of me. Definitely not a child prodigy.

There are three related questions here, I think:
1) The title of the OP: are genius children notably smarter as adults? IQ tends to be stable over time. Whatever measure you use for "genius" will presumably also be stable over time.
2) The first variation: do genius children go on to achieve great things? Not all, of course, but disproportionately so.
3) My variation: do folks who achieve great things (obviously this idea could use some definition) have a history of childhood genius? I suspect this is very disproportionately true, in the same way that great athletes tended to play a lot more sports as children than did great accountants.

[DSeid]

Your variation is potentially the most interesting to my mind LHOD.

I suspect it is statistically true but not meaningfully so. IOW of those who achieve "great things" there are likely more geniuses than in the general population by some measurable amount but the vast vast majority of those who do great things are not geniuses. Genius is not required for greatness and is insufficient for it as well. A certain level of basic ability (maybe slightly above average but maybe just average) is and then it is the combination of drive, habits of mind (inclusive most of the time of intellectual curiosity), and having the seed planted in the right soil (call it "opportunity'). And to my mind some small element of chance. Inherent genius is lowest on that list. But overall it doesn't hurt ...

[TokyoBayer]

Originally Posted by DSeid

IOW of those who achieve "great things" there are likely more geniuses than in the general population by some measurable amount but the vast vast majority of those who do great things are not geniuses. Genius is not required for greatness and is insufficient for it as well. A certain level of basic ability (maybe slightly above average but maybe just average) is and then it is the combination of drive, habits of mind (inclusive most of the time of intellectual curiosity), and having the seed planted in the right soil (call it "opportunity'). And to my mind some small element of chance. Inherent genius is lowest on that list. But overall it doesn't hurt ...

I had the fortune of personally knowing some people who really achieved "great things," including the president of a former company who took it from zero to several hundred million dollars in annual sales. Another had a very successful NGO.

Drive is very important. In the case of my former president, he went through three or four marriages because his work was his first love.

The right combination of self confidence without recklessness, although it may simply be that since we only see the successful ones that may be more of a factor of luck.

For building organizations, then leadership is of up most importance, and the near geniuses I've known haven't been really strong on that.

[Damuri Ajashi]

Originally Posted by engineer_comp_geek

IQ is not an accurate predictor of success in life.

Really?

IQ is pretty well associated with almost every good life outcome and negatively associated with almost every bad life outcome.

On average, you make more money, you live longer, you are less likely to have a failed marriage, you are more likely to graduate high school, you are more likely to graduate college, you are more likely to own a home, you are more likely to finish crossword puzzles, you are more less likely to be incarcerated, you are less likely to be murdered, you are less likely to become addicted to drugs, you are less likely to become a habitual smoker or an excessive drinker. I can't think of many life results that are NOT positively affected by higher IQ.

[Damuri Ajashi]

Originally Posted by Blake

Age group being the key. If the age group is 18-95 or 55-95 then there will be an increase in IQ with age, then a decline in IQ associated with senility.

I'm pretty sure my IQ started dropping somewhere between the age of 30 and 40.

[Leo Bloom]

You know, walking humbly with God, if you're into Micah-like stuff, feeding your family, not murdring people: these are great things.

ETA: so is spelling, sometimes.

[Voyager]

Originally Posted by RickJay

I was hyperlexic as well, reading before three.

I have often used the analogy of racing in terms of how I compared to my peers. It's as if I was a 100-yard dash specialist in a 400-metre race; I was really, really far ahead for a long time, and if the race had ended at 7 years old I would have dusted the field, but it didn't, so the field caught up and I didn't even win a medal. At 4 years old I could read when essentially no other kids could. At 7 I could read better than any kid in my school. At 9, one or two kids had caught up to me. At 12, more, and by the end of high school I was not remotely close to being the smartest kid in my school.

I was a very normal reader through 2/3 of first grade, at which time I jumped from Fun with Dick and Jane to Jules Verne. In second grade someone noticed I was reading 20,000 Leagues Beneath the Sea and pulled me out to read to the principal. I clearly understood what I was reading. In third grade they gave me the test for the highest reading level workbook, I passed it, and they let me read what I wanted after that.
And I've done okay intellectually. My oldest daughter was the same way - didn't read particularly early, but jumped from easy books to hard ones quickly, if not as quickly as me.

[TokyoBayer]

Originally Posted by Damuri Ajashi

IQ is pretty well associated with almost every good life outcome and negatively associated with almost every bad life outcome.

On average, you make more money, you live longer, you are less likely to have a failed marriage, you are more likely to graduate high school, you are more likely to graduate college, you are more likely to own a home, you are more likely to finish crossword puzzles, you are more less likely to be incarcerated, you are less likely to be murdered, you are less likely to become addicted to drugs, you are less likely to become a habitual smoker or an excessive drinker. I can't think of many life results that are NOT positively affected by higher IQ.

Cites for all of this. Lots of claims here.

[Surreal]

Originally Posted by TokyoBayer

Cites for all of this. Lots of claims here.

I think many of these are cited in Stuart Richie's book "Intelligence: All That Matters." A few of them are also included in Ritchie's article below:

https://aeon.co/ideas/how-clever-is-...smiss-iq-tests

One large study found that IQ scores at age 11 correlated 0.8 (on a scale of -1 to 1) with school grades at age 16. Surely this gives us some basis for calling these measures ‘intelligence tests’. But that’s just the beginning: higher IQ scores are predictive of more occupational success, higher income, and better physical and mental health. Perhaps the most arresting finding is that IQ scores taken in childhood are predictive of mortality. Smarter people live longer, and this association is still there after controlling for social class.