Emotional, behavioral and social difficulties among high-IQ children [pdf]

http://www.lscp.net/persons/ramus/docs/PAID16.pdf

by lainon • 10 years ago

115 63 10 years ago

Animats• 10 years ago

Summary: negative result.

"In conclusion, the data from the EDEN mother-child cohort do not support the hypothesis that 5–6 year-old children with high IQ experience more emotional, behavioral and social difficulties than children with normal IQ. If they do, then these difficulties must be very subtle and therefore went undetected in the present study."

dasmoth• 10 years ago

And it is just this 5-6 year groups that has been studied here -- nothing about older children.

gkya3• 10 years ago

I guess if they studied the 13-16 band they'd get positive results. Especially those who got special treatment as a child prodigy.

taurath2• 10 years ago

I.e. Before bullying becomes commonplace.

danieltillett• 10 years ago

Given the size of the study was any other outcome expected.

ap22213• 10 years ago

IQ has always been a difficult thing for me. I was born into a 3-sigma family to 4-sigma parents. And, on average, we all have lived below average lives.

My parents can barely manage their lives, and I'm the only child (of 4) who was able to finish college. So, I always find the fascination with IQ to be odd.

At 3rd grade, my siblings and I were separated from the rest of the kids and given the gifted label. (Someone once explained that 'gifted' was a cold war program to beat the soviets - idk). We were then given special treatment: small classes, lots of logic puzzles, access to technology and science, lots of field trips etc.

By the end of high school, approximately 25% of my class had already dropped out. But, for some odd reason (probably because obedience - i.e. 'conscientiousness') I succeeded.

Over all of those years, I came to realize that there were kids with high IQ who were smart but even more who were very stupid. Even of the smart ones, many of them seemed to completely lack creativity, intuition, or lateral thinking. And, many were also stricken with major behavioral and learning disabilities.

I realize that there are correlations with IQ to 'success'. But, the IQ club, for me, was really a circle jerk. And, I don't believe that they're somehow more re 'fit'. So, this analysis seems spot on.

Edit: oops, if I had actually read the link, instead of just the headline, I would have seen that it's not 'spot on'. Sorry :-)

thrownblown• 10 years ago

This. I was in GATE from 4th grade - 8th. Separate classes, separate field trips, produced a daily school news tv show. Most of my gifted classmates became highly involved with drugs in highschool. Few graduated high school, let alone college.

grahamburger• 10 years ago

I was in a program like this in 5th and 6th grade. I believe I was among the lowest achievers in the class, both by grades and extra curriculars. Of those I still keep in touch with, I believe I'm still among the lowest achievers - I never finished college, among other things, although I'm certainly doing fine for myself professionally. The class fed to two different high schools so I lost touch with roughly half of my classmates, but as far as I know they all finished high school and all that I know of finished college or university. Just another perspective.

jrapdx3• 10 years ago

The article shows no difference between average and gifted children in emotional and social behaviors. But we must not be deceived by such results because obviously enough no one is "average" in all or even any particular respects.

Having practiced medicine for a long time and working with thousands of people with behavioral/emotional disorders of many kinds, I can assure you that there is no necessary correlation between cognitive capability and "success" measured by any number of criteria.

When life difficulty seems out of phase with ability, it's wise to seek consultation or evaluation to find out if there is a correctable problem. As I've observed countless times, even geniuses (seriously) can have learning disorders, depression, anxiety and attentional disorders. These can be surprisingly disabling, and in many cases appropriate treatment can make a world of difference. I've seen that occur in many instances too.

BTW it is known that conditions of the kind I mention have moderate or strong heritability, so your description of a family characteristic of less success than would be expected may point to traits that "run in the family". All the more reason to check it out. I strongly believe it's never too late to make improvements in one's life, and we always have the obligation to take good care of ourselves.

nibs• 10 years ago

Same story throughout family and friends who went to gifted class. I think gifted people seem to have extreme outcomes: more drug addicts, more suicide, more success, more power. Developmental orchids compared to the staggering ruggedness of the developmental dandelions out there who keep on trucking no matter what.

murbard22• 10 years ago

It's uncommon, there are diminishing returns to IQ, and it is more striking when high IQ people do poorly, but in general the more you have the better off you are.

natermer• 10 years ago

There is some correlation between success and IQ, but it's absolutely not a given.

If you look at statistics you will see things like 'Average IQ of University Professor is 125 were as average IQ of factory worker is 85'.

That sounds cool and all until you realize that the number of people that work at a university as professors is in the dozens were as the number of people that work at a factory is in the hundreds... and that average IQ spread of factory workers is 70 to 140 and the spread of professors is 110 to 140. These things operate on bell curves.

Which means that there are a lot more high IQ people working at the factory then there are working at the university.

Which means if you want to figure out what people are more likely to succeed in life then you should just ignore IQ and concentrate on what they have already managed to achieve.

white-flame• 10 years ago

That's also my impression of a good chunk of the adults in my limited exposure to Mensa, so I don't think it's just a kid thing.

skrap2• 10 years ago

"N = 23; Full Scale IQ"

Enough for me to pretty much stop reading right there. Isn't 23 far too small? If there is signal there, you probably need more samples to draw it out.

nabla9• 10 years ago

The size of N tells very little alone. N=23 can be enough.

For example, N = 1 is enough if the rat can solve crossword puzzles. Effect size is so large that probability that you could guess which rat is in the control group and which is not is close to 1.0.

gwern3• 10 years ago

The people who claim that high-IQ types are doomed and will be 'The Outsiders' and will be discriminated against to the point that 90%+ of them will not get appropriate higher education (I won't link to the pseudo-statistics that supposedly 'proves' this) are claiming very large effect sizes (and blaming that for why they need shelter in high-IQ societies).

In this case, such large effects can be rejected pretty soundly; with the sample sizes given, 23 vs 1058, you have 80% power to detect `pwr.t2n.test(n1=1058, n2=23, power=0.80, alternative="greater")` ~> d=0.52 (which is, for example, about half the size of the black-white IQ gap, and considered a 'medium' effect size).

In addition, the longitudinal cohort studies of the gifted like Terman, Hunter, TIP, or SMPY, do not find any signs of severe emotional/behavioral/social difficulties, the genetic correlations (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_correlation#Intelligen...) are all in the wrong direction, adults are more able than kids to self-select into stimulating environments (possibly why heritability of intelligence increases with age), and so on. A new review paper which is relevant: "From Terman to Today: A Century of Findings on Intellectual Precocity" http://emilkirkegaard.dk/en/wp-content/uploads/From-Terman-t... , Lubinski 2016.

From a statistical perspective, this result doesn't tell us much about gifted adults not because the sample size is far too small, but because IQ scores at age 5-6 inherently don't predict adult IQ sufficiently well. This subsample of 23 kids with mean IQ of 134.6, selected because they are past the 130 threshold, are going to regress to the mean as they grow up. With the usual r=0.5 of 5yo/adult scores, their adult mean IQ will be more like 117 - which is above average but not 'gifted' by anyone's criterion. To try to study gifted adults by starting with them as kids, you would need to start another standard deviation up, around 150 IQ, which would be extremely difficult. (The correlation rapidly increases up to middle school, which is why TIP/SMPY don't suffer from this issue as much: much higher threshold and also much more reliable tests.)

skrap2• 10 years ago

Wow, thanks for the very detailed and interesting reply! You say:

"With the usual r=0.5 of 5yo/adult scores, their adult mean IQ will be more like 117"

As a total layperson, this is surprising! I would have thought that smart kids would have tended to stay smart, rather than have whatever effect be subject to a regression to the mean. Is this relationship well-established?

jnicholasp• 10 years ago

I assume you're referencing Grady Towers' essays about high IQ people feeling like 'Outsiders'. His argument, I think, was that high IQ does not inherently doom people to be outsiders/fail to get appropriate education/be unhappy and mal-adjusted/etc., but that high IQ is a potentially alienating trait and that it is the alienation - in those cases where the high IQ person doesn't have enough peers, support, and meaningful challenge - that does the damage.

What do you think of that argument, and do you know of any relevant research on that aspect of the question? It anecdotally resonates with my experience, and seems to be a prominent subsection of the responses in most threads of this type, but I would like to know what formal attempts have been made to measure it, if any exist.

Also, again IIRC, I thought Towers reassessed one of Terman's longitudinal studies and found that there was a correlation between the highest IQ individuals and social/emotional mal-adaption. Do you disagree with Towers' assessment?

jwatte• 10 years ago

Yes, like in most social and behavioural science, unfortunately.

kpil• 10 years ago

The mothers of highly intelligent children where at a much higher risk of postnatal depression.

The sample size was small, but it could indicate that there is a connection in older ages.

I am not sure how much of the measured intelligence in small children is related to their adult intelligence, and how much is variation in development that might even out.

bitwize• 10 years ago

At age 5-6, kids are just glad to have other kids around.

It's in the older elementary, middle, and high school years that kids start segregating into in- and outgroups and vigorously policing social boundaries.

kofejnik• 10 years ago

Not all kids. At age 5, I was perfectly happy to sit in a quiet corner with an interesting book.

nugget• 10 years ago

Anyone with high IQ kids should check out the Johns Hopkins CTY program. I felt bored, uncomfortable and out of place pretty much my entire pre-college educational life, with only a small handful of positive experiences, CTY being the best.

cryoshon• 10 years ago

agreed a thousand times! as a CTY alumni, my fond memories of being at CTY are of the first time in my life where i was surrounded by equals! it was such a positive experience for me.

heymijo2• 10 years ago

I asked the parent comment as well, but would you mind sharing more about your experience(s) at CTY? Thanks!

heymijo2• 10 years ago

Can you share more about your positive experiences, especially with CTY?

I hadn't heard of it before now and your anecdote would help shed light on what I'm reading about. I teach and I'm interested in all things learning.

laxatives• 10 years ago

Its an opportunity to take something like an intro level college course over the summer while in middle school with gifted kids your own age. You need to qualify by taking the SAT and scoring above some threshold and you can only take courses for subjects you scored well in (a high math score doens't qualify you for the language arts courses). A huge number of prominent people in all fields went to CTY.

I went in 7th grade to take Algebra over 3 weeks. It was pretty fun and remember being sort of blown away at the final presentations by what other groups had accomplished in their time. My group was pretty boring and just did did problems out of a textbook...

Honestly, my biggest memories from that were spending time with other kids (namely girls), especially since this is like peak puberty age. Its also at an age where its easy to make friends living in a dorm for a month.

I went to a similar course studying abroad, and it wasn't nearly as good. I took an overview course on physics in high school. It wasn't a math based course, so it just devolved in to pop science. And it was at an older age where people are much more judgemental and I remember thinking I'd prefer avoiding a good number of people for various reasons. I never had that while at CTY.

aridiculous• 10 years ago

Agree with the other commenters. It was fun to live the collegiate life for 3 weeks. Surprisingly, they have strong traditions despite only being in session 6 weeks during the summer.

I went two times. You only took one class for three weeks, but you spent A LOT of time in that class and in study sessions. It actually makes college look pretty lightweight to some extent.

Other than that, there were physical and social activities. It's fun just bonding with some other odd cats in college dorms. At times, I just wanted to hang out with the other kids instead of going to class. It was summer!

I took a cryptology class with a professor who worked at the NSA. We started with the easiest ciphers and progressed through to the German Enigma, which we solved as a final project.

The other class was probability and game theory. It didn't do that great of a job clearly, since I'm still terrible at probability. Sidenote: I confess I don't even really believe in probability as a strategy for making singular decisions. I later learned, thanks to the Internet, that this is a debated philosophical problem :)

Another year, instead of CTY, I did this lighter weight version of it where you take more classes but each is less time-intensive. I remember thinking it was really easy and not very worthwhile academically. The social life was definitely better.

garyrob2• 10 years ago

My kids both went to CTY in the summers. Both loved it. But my older son literally experienced it as life-altering. He'd been kind of isolated in school, but the wonderful rapport he had with like-minded kids at CTY, and the support they all gave each other, helped him develop social skills and confidence that he was able to use when he returned to school. He ended up having very close friends at his school, as well as keeping in touch with friends he'd made at CTY. I was very impressed when, later, out-of-the-blue, he said that it was CTY that had been the turning point for him.

So, parents, if you have gifted kids who are struggling a bit socially, I can't recommend CTY highly enough. Also, they will probably simply have a great time with the academic programs. (And/or can use them to get prerequisites for more advanced classes at their schools, as both my kids did.)

gokhan• 10 years ago

I wouldn't be surprised if the same group of kids in the study end up being the trouble makers or socially awkward ones with the beginning of primary school. Learning as a whole, waiting others to catch up and other methods of "modern" education does negative wonders on gifted children.

I have a profoundly gifted child, and witnessed this cycle (normal in preschool, problem child in primary) not only on my child but on many other gifted children. And almost all the parents of gifted children around me tries to find a remedy to boredom in school. School system actually leaves gifted ones behind by forcing them to slow down. The teacher makes a lot of difference but it's not enough if the child is still in the same curriculum.

Families of normal children don't help either. They totally reject the idea that gifted children needs some special attention, thinking that these kids can do well on their own because of stereotypical image of giftedness in society.

Edit: Some terms.

monkmartinez2• 10 years ago

Why not move the child up to the grade level to which he/she performs?

They do this at my children's charter school. My son is in 3rd grade doing 4/5th grade math (accelerated charter school) and he has a 7 year old in his class. My son reports that its all good.

I firmly reject forcing a teacher to cater to all the "special flowers" in his/her classroom. Here is the standard for the grade level. If child are above standard, move up... if child are below... move down. If child has a learning disability, here is a specialist or a class with similar children and more teacher aids.

Edit to add: My daughter has several special needs children in her class (1st grade) and all she talks about is how disruptive they are. The teacher places some of them near her because she is well behaved and will help the teacher "police" the disruptive children. She hates it and we have a meeting with Principal about it next week.

I don't care that these children may be the next Einstein's and are disruptive because they may be bored and smart. The fact is they are disrupting EVERYONE in the class. Who should take responsibility for that? I think it is the PARENT.

brianwawok2• 10 years ago

Parents can only do so much. Legit special needs is special needs.

From what I have read blended classes with special needs helps those with special needs, at the expense of the gifted or well behaved.

Is the trade worth it? To you likely not. To the special needs families? I think so.

cperciva• 10 years ago

Why not move the child up to the grade level to which he/she performs?

Because we need to be socialized by spending time surrounded by kids our own age. Seriously, that's what they said when I was in elementary school. Eventually the administration allowed me to skip one grade -- but only because I was born in February, and thus only barely younger than the youngest kids in my new cohort.

I'm not a pedagogist so I can't comment on the accuracy of the theory in general, but in my case it was absolutely counterproductive; I was socially closer to my intellectual peers than I ever was to my chronological peers, and rather than "socializing" me, keeping me with kids close to my age merely taught me to treat them with contempt.

jplasmeier• 10 years ago

When I was in elementary school I was singled out as "a genius" because I could add numbers in my head faster than anyone else. I was pretty good at consuming and regurgitating all of the information thrown at us, and I spent a lot of time reading/doing educationally valuable things thanks to my parents (of "ordinary" intelligence, whatever that even means).

Naturally, this went straight to my head, and left me with a lot of latent narcissism around my intelligence.

Around middle school I lost interest in my education and being smart and was no longer the best at school, though I still got A's without much effort. I struggled socially, but I don't think that this was caused by my intelligence; rather an inability to find the right people to do the things I enjoyed with. By the end of high school I was fairly popular, once I started finding those people and others stopped being so socially nepotistic.

By the time I got to college, my smarts were running out and I feel like I've hit an "abstraction ceiling" [0]. Compared to most STEM students towards the "top" of the board, I'm about average or below and very far from "a genius".

It's really difficult for me to continually remind myself of the fact that I was never special, and that there are a lot of people above me who are, because that was such a core part of my identity at a very formative age. That's been the biggest difficulty for me.

[0] https://anchoragechambermusicfestival.org/new-music-premiere...

themodelplumber• 10 years ago

But you are special. Maybe not special in the sense that you are guaranteed a certain fame or fortune, but you have the same amount of responsibility as anyone else. This is why people have mid-life crises, they wake up to the fact that they do have a unique self with unique needs, gifts, and values. With limited time remaining, it's crucial to find your gifts and use them to maximum capacity.

For my own mid-life crisis I learned about my personality type and found that I had a bunch of gifts in analysis, measurement, and framework building of which I wasn't aware. So I put them to work and lost 100 pounds. Now I'm trying to FIRE and think it might happen.

If you're interested I recommend Dario Nardi's book, 8 Keys to Self- leadership. It's incredibly dense and the exercises within can't really be completed, or rather, the psychological development opportunities within probably won't be reachable for anybody in their totality. The author says he's still working on the various facets himself. But it'll give you a sense of where your gifts are, and that makes life a lot more bearable.

vellum• 10 years ago

"trying to FIRE"

is FIRE an acronym?

gkya3• 10 years ago

I had a similar experience. I was raised as a curious child, with encyclopedias and stuff around, my mom says the first thing I ever said was "what's this?". In elementary school my teacher realised my interest in science and specifically physics and astronomy, gave me a comprehensive set of books on various scientific topics, for children, fifty-sixty books. I read them all, and learned a fair bit of stuff about astronomy, electronics, chemistry, and history of science. Add to that a 120-130 IQ test result, my friends called me the "professor", and in third grade my parents and my elementary school theacher decided that it was better to move me to a private school with "better" education. I took tests at some of the most pricy colleges of the country, and was accepted by a very famous school with full scholarship. This school was the fifth most expensive school in my country and a lot of the richest families had their children study there. During 4th grade I went to both my normal school which was public, and to this other school to catch up on English. And in fifth I switched full-time to the private school. I, as a son of a low-income family, in fact was getting on very well with the other kids there, but a couple years later, I was losing my interest in science and school in general, so my exam grades went down and down. On my way to adolescence, I wanted more friends and fun. So at the end in 7th grade I was moved back to a public school, and this was my big disaster, because, raised among the children of the richest and best families of the country, and with minimal exposure to random kids before that (not many kids in my neighbourhood), I couldn't integrate, and this resulted in me a depression and solitude that dured until my 20ies. As a 23-yrs-old guy, I still live the effects of the experience, though I've overcome the depression.

During high school I was obsessed with becoming normal, like other kids, pretended being an ordinary stupid boy, because I was always marginalised as I never experienced the vulgar street life and basically didn't know how to act in such a setting. I don't want to come off as a snob, but truly my social life was limited to my parents, my brother, three-four well-behaved kids from my street and a bunch of Richie Riches until I was about 14, so go figure. I still am a bit the odd kid but as the years went by I learned to embrace my abnormalities as my distinct personal traits and found out that I wasn't all that unique, but I was without contact to people like me. Seems obvious now, but not so much to a depressed adolescent which I was.

So my recomandation to parents of high-IQ kids would be: make them feel that they're smart, but make them know that this is not that big of a deal, and don't treat them specially or move them to weird schools. I've ended up losing all my interest in becoming a scientist and spending my best years in solitude and depression.

bloodorange• 10 years ago

Though there is nothing I can say to change the tough years you endured, I would however like to say to you that the best years are yet to come. Look ahead my friend. There are many years ahead of you.

Rationally, I concede that, in theory, there's a possibility that they may be terrible but you have to concede that given your current levels of self-awareness and your ability to introspect, you have a lot of agency and things may turn out to be much better than those unpleasant years.

From the bottom of my heart, I wish you good luck.

ovatsug25• 10 years ago

Success is on the path, not at the end of it. You are on the path my friend. Notice it, appreciate it, and enjoy the view. You have overcome depression. Soon enough you will become one who shares your best self with the world. I believe! :)

unabst• 10 years ago

remind myself of the fact that I was never special

I have a tee shirt that reads "PERFECT HUMAN". I love it when people react to it because it says so much about them. I'm not even well groomed. I'm clearly not perfect. But whatever great thing they say, I respond with my favorite line.

"We're all perfect, no?"

"Perfect" is the perfect example because it's so specific, yet ambiguous. It's so imaginable, yet impossible. But that's only if perfect is the goal, and a fact. These are factual issues.

When perfect is made the start line however, it's a philosophy. "Everyone is perfect" isn't a fact but an assertion. And when such an assertion yields positive results, it becomes an axiom, for when you desire those results.

What would the world look like if everyone were perfect? I'm looking at it right now. "We're all sinners, let's behave" becomes "if we're all perfect, why are we sinning?" Sins don't make us imperfect. Perfect people sin. By altering assumptions, the game changes. Reality changes. I prefer this reality, so I enact this axiom. I deal with the imperfect actions of perfect people instead of wasting time ruining reputations or perfecting my own.

With regards to "special" or "genius", we can do the same thing.

Everyone is special. Everything we do is special. Things not working out is just things not working out. It isn't special that needs to get fixed. We just need to make things work.

Everyone is a genius. I can google anything and store everything. I have infinite knowledge and infinite memory and I prefer spreadsheets over any mental arithmetic.

Honestly, the capacity for fluent intellectual literacy may be the greatest cognitive accomplishment by any species, and we (on HN at least) have it. Regardless of whether anyone agrees, the mere fact that anyone who can read can understand what I am writing here and be tickled by it is a testament to the genius of the modern intellectually curious.

When was the last time not being special or not being a genius stopped you?

The only time is when you thought you weren't good enough so you didn't even try. That's it. So I say get over it, do away with it, and just focus on exactly what you want to accomplish. Words have never stopped anybody. It's always "you".

tajen• 10 years ago

My sister is an engineer, but she also does biking and alpinism. As in, from Paris to Patagonia kind of biking, and 7,000m-summit climbing. And she says, no matter how high and how far you go, how dangerous it gets and how many people admire you, when you do that, you always end up in a group where most people kick ass more than you do.

As for me, at one point I realized happiness is about friends and family. And honesty, having a kid is something I admire as much as climbing summits.

So don't worry that people don't seem to recognize your genius anymore, because people are still quitely admirative of most things that seem usual to you.

nom• 10 years ago

I always felt that the human brain has some kind of maximum capacity and you can trade one skill for another (even across major domains like logic and social skills) and that brain structure / skills are mostly defined by your actions early in life.

Genetics sure play a huge role here and there are countless abnormalities that are known to change the brain and mind, but I think that the development is what defines your strengths and weaknesses.

Unfortunately we can't proof if the brain structure you end up with was mostly caused by your actions, or if your development progressed the way it did because your brain is just built that way.

strictnein• 10 years ago

An anecdote: Our kid is about to be moved to a program that is for kids who have emotional and behavioral issues. He would likely be considered high-IQ (tests in the 99% percentile, reads at level several grades above their own, etc), but has basically been unable to focus and learn in a normal classroom setting.

Last year, when he was 6, he had some issues as well, but was mostly able to stay in the classroom. This year, at age 7, the issues skyrocketed.

I'd be very interested in a study like this conducted on 7-8 year olds, because it wouldn't surprise me if they found some very different results. A 5 year old kid is so much different than a 7 year old.

URSpider94• 10 years ago

I would be much more interested to see a study of profoundly gifted children, IQ of 150+. My intuition, from interacting with kids in this range in a regular basis, is that the result would be different.

garyrob2• 10 years ago

Anyone interested in this subject will probably want to see Grady Tower's essay, "The Outsiders". http://www.worlddreambank.org/O/OUTSIDRS.HTM.

My IQ is just on the cusp of the level where these effects become a risk in Grady's view, and I think I did suffer from them rather badly--by the time I got to college I had extreme social anxiety that made me almost non-functional, which lasted through most of my 20's. (And still affects me a little bit now even at age 60!) I think it was rooted in the fact that my relatively high IQ made me interested in things other than what my peers are interested in (science, etc.), and to generally take an unusually cerebral approach to life, so I was different. So I was a bit bullied and isolated, which me feel more different, which made me more self-conscious and therefore less social functional, which made me more bullied and isolated, which made me feel more different, in a spiral that eventually led to deep despair for years and years.

But most high-IQ people don't have those problems. There usually have to be other factors at play than IQ, which are exacerbated by IQ. In my case I think it was because I was also unusually sensitive pretty much from birth (as described by my nursery school teacher in a report I still have!), so I really felt any rejection unusually strongly, and other factors including parents who shared none of my interests, and no siblings until I was already pretty far down the spiral.

Elsewhere in these comments, Johns Hopkins' CTY program is mentioned, where smart kids spend a few years each summer studying and hanging out. Kids who attend it generally love it because they finally get to be with like-minded kids. I feel that if I had had that opportunity it might have broken the spiral. So when I had my own kids I looked for an opportunity like that, and when I came across CTY I made sure my kids had that opportunity. One of them feels like it was the turning point of his life.

Emotional, behavioral and social difficulties among high-IQ children [pdf]

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