Comments

First of all, i want to point out about the multipotentialite meeting in UK, organised in the summer of 2016. More info here.

Second, i will explain a bit about the structure of my posts, they are just a bit of a much bigger project, aiming to study how the IQ test appeared and developed, and maybe, if it is possible, to find some alternative method of testing for other kind of geniality, not only the ones of intellectual origin. It is still work in progress. Also, as a future business/charity, which will test, support, advice, train, help with mentor-ship, this are my first steps. We want to start with testing, trying to improve Stanford-Binet scale and other test following this one. This is one of the reason of my financial independence enterprise, meant to give me 100% free time through passive income streams, in order to follow this idea of helping other multipotentialite/polymath/struggling geniuses to not spend years of their life trying to search what is wrong, instead of focusing on their advantages and abilities.

See you soon.
G.

Gifted Children - The latest report on Terman studies

As i promised today i will try to resume and check what i think is the most important part of the life cycle studies of Terman, and i will provide a link in the end to the full report on PDF, if you want to read it.

Noted ideas and concept in the report:

- Using different intelligence tests, mostly based on Stanford-Binet, 661 gifted boys and girls were found, all of them with IQ of 140 or more. In all, the final number of subjects amounted to 1,528.

- In 1927, when the average age of the group was 17, the first follow up survey was published under the title The Promise of Youth.

- The general idea was in that time that a gifted child will revert to average at maturity or decline and sicken and eventually die. Quote from Terman studies: "With few exceptions the superior child becomes the superior adult, superior in nearly every respect to the generality, though, as in childhood, the degree of the superiority differs in different areas." This was a very brave idea, one that still needed support  even 60 years later.

- The question which naturally interests us most, however, is to what extent is the promise of childhood fulfilled by the achievements of later life? As a general rule, it would seem, the intelligent

child develops into the intelligent adult. As we might expect from the mode of selection, "the

superiority of the gifted group is greatest in intellectual ability, scholastic accomplishment,

and vocational success." Tests applied in 1927, 1939, and 1950-52 show that at every stage their

mental superiority is astonishingly well sustained. "The majority of the subjects remained close to

the 99th percentile of the generality; and this was true even of those whose careers were not

particularly notable." Indeed, judged by the test mainly employed in the follow-up surveys (a test

of "concept mastery") "not only do the mentally superior hold their own, they actually increase in

intellectual stature." Here i want to say that probably because this is based mostly on IQ, they tend to have better intellectual achievements, and this study is not relevant for gifts in other area (arts, gymnastics, sport, dance, mechanics etc.)

- Talking about college and graduation, the proportion of success is ten times as high as that which would hold for a random group of the same age. None of the gifted individuals are in the lowest occupational categories, though these categories account for about 13 per cent of the general urban population.

- Additional evidence of the surprisingly high achievement attained by men only is furnished by their publications and patents. These include nearly 2,000 scientific and technical articles, some sixty books or monographs on science, art, literature, or the humanities (including textbooks translated into

several languages), thirty-three novels, and 700 plays, short stories, essays, and miscellaneous

articles, not to mention thousands of journalistic contributions and scripts for film, radio, or television. The number of technical patents runs to at least 230.

- Out of the 1,500 cases, however, there were eighty or ninety whose apparent progress fell short of expectation. Since their intelligence, as assessed by tests, differs little from that of the rest of the group, it is evident that outstanding accomplishments call for something else besides sheer innate ability. A comparison between the most successful and the least successful suggests that health, emotional stability, ambition, and will to work are equally indispensable. This does not affect the main inference to be drawn from all these investigations-namely, the value of intelligence testing, even in its present imperfect form, for the purpose of predicting future accomplishment. Here anyway could be another matter, as i meet some very gifted people when i was doing my personal research for "The ones that got away" a study about geniuses that prefer a normal life in anonymity and choose family instead of career. Nothing to blame here, and to understand this, check the case on Kim Ung-yong (IQ-210)

- They were noticed to do what is called assortative mating,a strong tendency for gifted men and women to marry persons who, like themselves, are above average in general intelligence. Their children had an average IQ of 133.

- The total expense of this studies has been approximately a quarter of a million dollars.

The books about this subject are fascinating, bringing the genius and geniality in a new light, changing our pre-conceptions and giving us ideas for the new generations. Is a study like no other, still on going, and i had the occasion to have a conversation with one of the original members of Terman group this year in a online forum.

The link for the full text here. 

Leta Stetter Hollingworth

Leta Stetter Hollingworth (1886-1939) was an educational psychologist. She was a student of
E. L. Thorndike, at University of Nebraska-Lincoln (B.A., 1906), then studied at Teachers College (M.A. in Education, 1913; Ph.D. in Educational Psychology, 1916) - Under E. L. Thorndike
Career:
Assistant principal of School District No. 6, Saline County, Nebraska
Teacher at McCook High School
Clearing-House for Mental Defectives (she administered Binet tests) (1913)
Clinical Psychologist at Bellevue Hospital (1915)
Consulting Psychologist to New York Police Department (1915)
Teachers College, Columbia University -- Professor of Educational Psychology

Major Contribution:
Wrote first comprehensive text on the gifted
Taught first college course on the gifted
Commenced one of the first systematic studies of children with intelligence quotients (IQ) above 180

    Although Leta Stetter Hollingworth is perhaps best known for her work with exceptional children (discussed below), she also performed pioneering work in the field of psychology of women, which greatly overlaped with issues of intelligence and intellectual ability. In the early 1900s, there were two commonly held beliefs regarding women that Hollingworth scientifically. First, it was generally accepted by many members of society (particularly those in power) that women were mentally incapacitated during menstruation. Based on this belief, many employers would not hire women because they believed it was not possible for them to be as productive as men and would not be able to handle major responsibilities due to their monthly impairments. Hollingworth empirically tested this hypothesis and found that women's performance on several cognitive, perceptual, and motor tasks was similar to that of males, even during menstration.

    A second premise that sparked the interest of Hollingworth was the variability hypothesis which asserted that women as a group were more similar than men as a group; that is, men have a much wider range of talents as well as defects than do women. This proposition was used to explain why there were more men who were geniuses as well as more men who were mentally deficient and in institutions. The correlate of this premise is that women will never be able to achieve the highest achievements and would have to settle for mediocrity. In a large study, Hollingworth examined 1,000 male newborns and 1,000 female newborns and found no greater inherent variability in males than in females.

    In the 1920s, Hollingworth's efforts shifted to the study of children, particularly exceptional children. Much of her work on giftedness was being conducted at the same time as Terman's study on giftedness. While the two individuals never met, they had great respect for each other and the work each was doing. Many of Terman's beliefs about giftedness coincided with those held by Hollingworth, but they diverged on one major point. Terman believed that giftedness was inherited and was only interested in defining and describing giftedness. Although Hollingworth acknowledged the role of inheritance in giftedness, she also believed that educational and environmental factors played key roles in the development of potential. Resultantly, Hollingworth was more interested in how to properly nurture giftedness and how to appropriately educate gifted individuals.

    One of Hollingworth's most notable studies regarding giftedness was sparked in November, 1916, when she saw for the first time a child test above 180 IQ on the Stanford-Binet (S-B). She became intrigued, and over the span of the next 23 years was able to find 11 other children in the New York City region with such intellectual giftedness and attempted and in-depth study of their genius. Knowing that she would never live long enough to see all of the children well into their adult lives, she meticulously attempted to build a framework upon which great future research and findings could be accomplished. She deserves much credit for pioneering into such a challenging field. Those who test above 180 IQ (S-B) are characterized by a strong desire for personal privacy, seldom volunteer personal information, do not like to have attention called to their families and homes, and are afraid of the potential ramifications of being labeled as "special" in society. Amidst all of these concerns, Leta S. Hollingworth conducted research consistent both with scientific interest and with the preservation of personal privacy in mind. She laid a foundation for the study of truly gifted children.

Publications
The Psychology of Subnormal Children (1920)
Special Talents and Defects (1923)
Gifted Children: Their Nature and Nurture (1926)
The Psychology of the Adolescent (1928)
Children Above 180 IQ Stanford-Binet: Origin and Development (1942)

Christopher Michael Langan

One of the reference points in genius study and analysis is Chris Langan's life. Who is this, you will ask? 

Christopher Michael Langan (born c. 1952) is an American autodidact with an IQ reported to be between 195 and 210, although IQ tests are highly unreliable at such high levels. He has been described as "the smartest man in America" as well as "the smartest man in the world" by the media. Langan has developed a "theory of the relationship between mind and reality" which he calls the "Cognitive-Theoretic Model of the Universe" (CTMU).

Langan was born in San Francisco, California, circa 1952. He spent most of his early life in Montana, with his mother and three brothers. His mother was the daughter of a wealthy shipping executive but was cut off from her family's fortune. Langan didn't grow up with his biological father as he died or disappeared before he was born. This eventually resulted in an economic struggle for the family, causing a food scarcity, reducing the family to a life of poverty.

During elementary school, Langan was repeatedly skipped ahead, which resulted in torment by his peers. Although teachers praised Langan for his college-level work, his peers still bullied him, not for his intelligence, but because of his family's socio-economic status. Langan has disclosed that he was brutally beaten by his stepfather, Jack Langan. Chris Langan recalled that his "stepfather constantly asked [Chris] difficult questions, and when I'd give him correct answers to those questions, he'd bat me in the mouth or something of that nature to let me know he didn't appreciate a guy trying to be smarter than he was."At the age of twelve years, Langan began weight training, and forcibly ended the abuse by throwing his stepfather out of the house and telling him never to return when he was fourteen.

Langan says he spent the last years of high school mostly in independent study, teaching himself "advanced math, physics, philosophy, Latin and Greek". He allegedly earned a perfect score on the SAT (pre-1995 scale) despite taking a nap during the test. Langan attended Reed College and later Montana State University, but faced with financial and transportation problems, and believing that he could teach his professors more than they could teach him, he dropped out.

Langan took a string of labor-intensive jobs for some time, and by his mid-40s had been a construction worker, cowboy, Forest Service Ranger, farmhand, and, for over twenty years, a bouncer on Long Island. Langan was also approached and contracted by Disney Research and he previously worked for Virtual Logistix, a technology company.According to company records, Langan "produced original research in various fields of mathematics, including graph theory, algebra, advanced logic and model theory, abstract computation theory and the theory of computational intractability, artificial intelligence, physics and cosmology". Langan said he developed a "double-life strategy": on one side a regular guy, doing his job and exchanging pleasantries, and on the other side coming home to perform equations in his head, working in isolation on his Cognitive-Theoretic Model of the Universe (CTMU).

In 1999 Langan and others formed a non-profit corporation called the "Mega Foundation" to "create and implement programs that aid in the development of gifted individuals and their ideas."

Langan has allegedly completed Design for a Universe, but is searching for ways to optimize the publicity and sale of the book. Langan has also been quoted as saying that "you cannot describe the universe completely with any accuracy unless you're willing to admit that it's both physical and mental in nature" and that the CTMU "explains the connection between mind and reality, therefore the presence of cognition and universe in the same phrase". He calls his proposal "a true 'Theory of Everything', a cross between John Archibald Wheeler's 'Participatory Universe' and Stephen Hawking's 'Imaginary Time' theory of cosmology."In conjunction with his ideas, Langan has claimed that "you can prove the existence of God, the soul and an afterlife, using mathematics."

The CTMU has gained both praise, and controversy in the scientific community. Robert Seitz, a former NASA Executive and Mega Foundation director stated "every physicist is inundated with amateurs' ‘Theories of Everything,' but Chris' CTMU is very, very different".On the flip side, the CTMU theory has been criticized for its use of convoluted language. Langan's use of terms he has invented (or redefined) has made his exposition obscure, leading some to question his honest intention to make himself clear.

In 2004, Langan moved with his wife Gina (née LoSasso), a clinical neuropsychologist, to northern Missouri, where he owns and operates a horse ranch and undertakes activities for his Foundation.

Asked about creationism, Langan has said:

I believe in the theory of evolution, but I believe as well in the allegorical truth of creation theory. In other words, I believe that evolution, including the principle of natural selection, is one of the tools used by God to create mankind. Mankind is then a participant in the creation of the universe itself, so that we have a closed loop. I believe that there is a level on which science and religious metaphor are mutually compatible.

Langan has said elsewhere that he does not belong to any religious denomination, explaining that he "can't afford to let [his] logical approach to theology be prejudiced by religious dogma."He calls himself "a respecter of all faiths, among peoples everywhere."

(source:Wikipedia)

I know i am a bit lazy and i just took this information, but i think it is important to find about some living examples to whom we can relate, before we start to talk about some brainy complicated theories and methods.

Introduction

Hello everyone. This is my story. This could be everyone story. What do you mean when you say genius? But talented? Multipotentialite? Multipode? Renaissance person? What all of those have in common? Is genius something you are born with or you can achieved? If the answer to last option is yes, how can you achieved? This are only few of the questions i will try to find an answer for you. This blog is one of my many side projects, or maybe just a way to put all my info in just one place. We will see what will happen. Enough for today. See you soon.

G.