Anemone's Research Emporium

Gifted people as an at risk population

(originally posted at http://www.Cerebrals.com/board in the Intelligence folder, May-July, 2005.)
Moved here to save for posterity.

Intro

Some people say gifted people are an at risk population. Others say not. I say that some gifted people are at risk and others not. But I would like some more facts.

What are the studies used to justify gifted programs on the basis of gifted kids being at risk? Is it just on the basis of gifted kids not doing well in school in regular programs? Or is there evidence gifted kids are at risk in the real world as adults?

If anyone knows of any good studies on this subject (books, journal articles), I would like some hard data on who's at risk and why, if it's out there. I'm familiar with Grady Tower's article and will be reading Terman's five volume set shortly (may take a few days to get through!) What else is there out there? Does anyone have any lists posted anywhere I can work from?

I will put together a reading list as I go, but it sure would help if there was one already out there.

[Note: Grady Towers' article: The Outsiders.]

[Originally posted on Cerebrals Fri May 27, 2005]

Leta Stetter Hollingworth (1942) Children Above 180 IQ Stanford-Binet.

The author was concerned about the schooling of exceptionally gifted kids. She saw the greatest discrepancy between mental age and calendar age in the elementary grades, and recommended gifted classes for this age group instead of thumb-twiddling in regular classes or skipping grades (or truancy). She thought that the problems the exceptionally gifted had would become much less significant by the later teens when they were old enough to choose their own environment. She didn't really see these kids as being at risk as adults, and her subjects seem to have turned out well, for the most part. In some cases, rebellion against irrelevant schooling seems to have slowed them down in adjusting to adult life. Most of her subjects (8/12) were boys.

[Originally posted on Cerebrals Fri May 27, 2005]

Joanne Decker Denko, 1977. Through the Keyhole at Gifted Men and Women: A Study of 159 Adults of High IQ.

When asked about the 'problems of being highly intelligent':

Women below IQ 125: perplexed, quizzical, or dubious at question
Women above IQ 125: almost all start venting.

Survey of Mensans:
Q: Do you feel that being of intelligence to qualify you for Mensa puts you at any disadvantages in social, occupational, or other ways? How do you feel about working under or over people of average intelligence?

Only one or two women in study (out of 58 ) said 'no problem'
Men in study: a handful in Cleveland (1973) and half of men in Columbus (1966) said 'no problem'

• Obviously, there may be significant sex differences in outcome.
• The author (and some male subjects) was more upset at 'wasted' talent of women without careers than the women in the study were.

[Originally posted on Cerebrals Fri May 27, 2005]

Genetic Studies of Genius, volume 3. The Promise of Youth: Follow-up Studies of a Thousand Gifted Children. Barbara Stoddard Burks, Dortha Williams Jensen and Lewis M. Terman, 1930. Stanford University Press.

Follow-up 6 years after initial group selection; most of subjects still in school

• blames Dickens for stereotype of weak sickly gifted kid (boo! hiss! bad Dickens!)
• subjects selected for musical talent in childhood with IQs below 140 didn't amount to anything; one with IQ >140 became famous pianist/composer; -> need for high IQ in order to be successful in fine arts.

not a whole lot in this volume, but you do get to see the progress of their education

[Originally posted on Cerebrals Mon Jun 06, 2005]

Genetic Studies of Genius, volume 4. The Gifted Child Grows Up: Twenty-five Years' Follow-up of a Superior Group. Lewis M. Terman and Melita H. Oden, 1947. Stanford University Press.

This is where the data starts to show something. I think this is comparable with the age in Cerebrals.

• Average age 30-35
• roughly 95% response rate (of original subjects still alive).
• overall functioning of group higher than for general population.
• mortality rate below norm for general population; suicide rate below norm for general population; suicides had higher average IQ (157.0) than those who died from natural causes (147.2) or accidents (150.1), but n not high enough to test for significance.
• psychiatric hospitalization rates for men lower than for general population, higher for women.
• average IQ higher for worse-off groups in terms of general adjustment in life.
• Only 12 subjects didn't finish high school.
• About 70% of men and 67% of women had at least one college degree by date of this follow-up (about 8x norm for California at the time). College graduates more likely to have parent(s) with college degree than non-graduates.
• within group, college graduates had significantly higher average adult IQ scores than other subjects; Adult IQ also correlated with grades.
• 70% of men in high-status occupations (5x norm); IQs higher for higher status jobs.
• 42% of women housewives; most of rest working FT.
• subgroup with IQs >170 basically the same as rest of group; except:
  1. >170 IQ women less well adjusted than rest of women in group (65.6% of >170 IQ women vs 81.8% of total group of women with basically no real problems).
  2. significantly more >170 IQ men graduated from college (85%) than rest of men in group; also higher grades and higher occupational status.
• men: top 150 achievers much more likely to have father with college degree than bottom 150 achievers (whose fathers more often didn't even finish high school); bottom 150 achievers more likely to be from broken home than top 150 achievers; IQ difference not big with much overlap.

This table calculated by Anemone Cerridwen, 4/6/2005. Based on calculations in Grady Towers' The Outsiders

Highest scoring category (> 135) may be roughly equivalent to about 3 sigma (the level of IQ found in Cerebrals, TNS etc.) - It's meant to be comparable to Grady Towers' divisions in The Outsiders but I'm open to discussion on this since I just eyeballed it.

Additional note: Jan 24, 2007: These numbers are calculated backwards from the data published. The actual percentages in each category are presumably sitting in the original data files in archives somewhere at Stanford University. This is an estimate of what they would be.

[Originally posted on Cerebrals Mon Jun 06, 2005]

Genetic Studies of Genius, volume 5. The Gifted Group at Mid-life: Thirty-five Years' Follow-up of the Superior Child. Lewis M. Terman and Melita H. Oden, 1959. Stanford University Press.

I think this age range is more comparable with the age over at TNS and perhaps some of the other 3 sigma societies I haven't seen.

Average age 45.

• 86% of men in high status occupations (a bunch got promoted since 1940); 50% of women housewives; 42% of women working FT
• Men and women not yet married had higher IQ scores than those who had married at some point. (So, if you're having problems with an annoying relative bugging you about your marital status, you can always say it's a known fact that the highest IQs may not even be married by age 45, which is twisting this data, but so what)
• IQs of subjects not well adjusted higher than for those who were basically ok (as cited in The Outsiders)
• Male:female suicide ratio in general population = 3-4:1; in Terman's subjects = 2:1 (suicide rate may be low for men, high for women, or both - don't know expected rate)

This table calculated by Anemone Cerridwen, 4/6/2005. Based on calculations in Grady Towers' The Outsiders
btw: I found an error in Towers' calculations, so the numbers for men in this table are slightly different from his.

Grady Towers considered the highest scoring category (> 175) to be equivalent to about 3 sigma (the level of IQ found in Cerebrals, TNS etc.)

Note that a less than satisfactory adjustment means poorer adjustment for some part of the last 35 years, though not necessarily all of those years. In other words, about 45% of the sample in the highest score range had had noted problems at some point or other, whereas 55% had been basically ok the whole time. (Everyone has some problems - the researchers were looking at situations that were more serious than normal.)

Original data from Terman (1959) Genetic Studies of Genius volume 5; calculation from Grady Towers: The Outsiders; recalculated by Anemone Cerridwen 4/6/2005

[Originally posted on Cerebrals Mon Jun 06, 2005]

Post-high school outcomes of high IQ adults with learning disabilities. Gregory A. Holliday, James R. Koller and Carol D. Thomas, 1999. Journal for the Education of the Gifted, 22(3): 266-281.

This one's a bit more sobering.

80 subjects with severe learning disabilities (23 female; 57 male); average age 23 (range 18-48; SD 6; 85% of subjects 18-27)

• IQ >120 on either WAIS-R verbal; WAIS-R performance; or WAIS-R full scale.
• 92% completed high school (vs 50% for LD population in general)
• 48% wanted at least two years of postsecondary education, but by an average of five years after high school, only 21% had done more than two years of college or university; only 18% had finished desired post-secondary education; most of rest keeping trying.
• 52% working in unskilled jobs
• 36% working in skilled jobs
• 9% working in professions
• <22% earned >$6 US/hour (1999)
• >76% earned <$6 US/hour

Don't know equivalent numbers for LD with regular IQs (presumably worse) or for non-disabled people IQ>120 (presumably much better).

• HIQ people with learning disabilies are often diagnosed at later age (if at all) than is typical for LD because their intelligence masks the disability (and vice versa). It is unlikely that very many (if any) LD gifted made it into Terman's sample because of his selection procedures.

'Results suggest that these adults were generally functioning at levels commensurate with their learning-disability deficits rather than at levels commensurate with their identified intellectual strengths.' (from abstract)

[Originally posted on Cerebrals Fri Jul 01, 2005]

Final comment (January 24, 2007)

These are only the main postings I made with information from publications. I made many more postings in this thread and there were many comments by others, both positive and negative. This subject can bring up strong feelings in people, and, quite frankly, I was badly bullied by some people, which is something no one should ever have to worry about on a site dedicated to gifted people. I encourage people to keep an open mind and do some reading if they're curious.

Since this time, I have come to the conclusion that the single most important factor in how well you do in life is the social support network you have. Exceptionally gifted people have a harder time finding peers than the regularly gifted or merely smart (or average, for that matter), and so, if the social support network they're born into and grow up in goes belly-up for some reason, they have a harder time finding support elsewhere to compensate. We're mammals. We need family groups to survive. When we leave the herd, or tribe, or pack, or whatever, we have a harder time finding a new one to join. That's all.

The moral of the story is: be nice to people, even if you have nothing in common with them; and: make a point of having people in your life who like you for who you are.