Although some psychologists argue that giftedness is a myth and that extraordinary performance is merely a consequence of deliberate practice, there is substantial evidence that some people are born with extraordinary cognitive skills that we refer to as “giftedness.” Ellen Winner, psychologist at Boston College, drawing upon research from MRI scans, Winner states:
Indirect evidence indicates that gifted children and savants have atypical brain organization (whether as a result of genetics, the in utero environment, or after-birth trauma). First, giftedness in mathematics, visual arts, and music is associated with superior visual-spatial abilities, and children with mathematical gifts show enhanced brain activity in their right hemisphere when asked to recognize faces, a task known to involve the right hemisphere.Typically, giftedness is manifest in early childhood.
Sir Francis Galton, one of the pioneers of the concept of intelligence was a child prodigy who was purported to be reading by the age of two, fluent in Latin and Greek at age five, and solving quadratic equations at age eight.
Another child prodigy, Irish mathematician, William Rowan Hamilton, learned to read English at age 3, and by age 5 was able to read and translate Latin, greek and Hebrew. By age 8, he was fluent in Italian, French and Latin and by age 10 had a grasp of Arabic and Sanskrit as well as other Asian languages. He is most remembered for his discovery of quaternions and what is called the Hamiltonian operator.
The brilliant mathematician and one of the founders of the programmable computer, John von Neumann, could divide two eight-digit numbers in his head at age 6 and was proficient in calculus at age 8? From an early age, his spoke his native Hungarian as well as Latin, Ancient Greek, and later, German and English.
Einstein’s giftedness, on the other hand, was not evident until much later and he appeared during his early childhood to be intellectually limited. His sister Maja reported, “He had such difficulty with language that those around him feared he would never learn to speak.” In fact, one of his schoolmasters predicted that he would never amount to much.
Thomas Edison, who suffered from dyslexia, dropped out of school during his first grade when his frustrated teacher, Reverend G. B. Engle, described him as “addled.” His giftedness was not apparent until adulthood, though it may have been evident at an earlier age had someone observed him closely.
The biographies of child prodigies reveal that their gifts usually have a broad expanse, enabling them to acquire high competence at an early age in whatever area they dedicate their focus. The window for language acquisition occurs during our formative years, and those who are gifted can usually acquire fluency in several languages much more quickly than the average. However, there are gifted people such as Einstein and Edison, whose gifts are not evident during early youth but emerge later. Such people do not usually acquire many languages in early youth. For more information on giftedness, visit: Is the Concept of Giftedness a Myth? – Intelligence and IQ
