What is intelligence? David G. Myers defines intelligence as the mental quality consisting of the ability to learn from experience, solve problems and use knowledge to adapt to new situations (Myers 310.) This is a very broad definition and therefore is the best one to define a subject that has as large gray area as theories of intelligence does.
A large factor that affects whether or not society deems someone to be intelligent is the college bias. This is the mindset that anyone that went to college and/or graduate school in entitled to be considered more intelligent than someone that didn’t go to college at all. This is because people value book smarts and the knowing of facts more than the ability to use those facts and general knowledge to solve problems. People would be quick to say that Albert Einstein is more intelligent than your average electrician. In reality, they are of equal intelligence as they excel in their own fields. You wouldn’t expect the electrician to be able to explain what a black hole is composed of in the same way you should not expect Einstein to be able to know how to rewire an entire house. They excel in their own areas, and therefore have intelligence in those areas. Human beings, being the competitive animals that they are, strive find a way to measure intelligence. The problem that arises when humans try to test intelligence is when they run into the testing bias.
The testing bias is an unavoidable factor of intelligence tests that causes them to favor one group over another. For example, a person who is a visual learner is asked to listen to a reading and answer questions accordingly. Because of they way their brain works, they would probably do poorly on the test than if they were allowed to read the passage. This is an example of a bias. As it stands, there is no way to create a perfect and unbiased intelligence test. This is why intelligence tests should be taken with a grain of salt. What intelligence tests, more specifically ones that measure IQ, really measure is a person’s mental capacity. IQ reflects a person’s ability and speed of understanding more than actual knowledge. Ability to understand and what a person knows are both aspects of intelligence that come from different directions. This idea is represented well in the phenomenon of the child prodigy.
Child prodigies are children that at very young age show signs of accelerated understanding of the world around them. They have very high IQ’s and usually treasure their time in school more than other children. Most of them skip grades and go on to higher learning at a much earlier time than other children their age. Worldwide there are about ninety of these prodigies and many of them are latent to their abilities as their brilliance can go unnoticed for many years if the right stimulus is not given to them (Summers.)
Sho Yano is a child prodigy that can almost be considered the stereotype for all other prodigies. His gift was noticed early by his mother who started Sho off with teaching him piano at the age of three. From there, Sho’s abilities began to blossom. At age four Sho was playing the complex works of Mozart with great ease. From there, Sho was home schooled by his mother and went off to pass the SAT’s with an astounding score of 1500 out of 1600 at the mere age of eight years old. From there, Sho was accepted into college at nine and graduated at age twelve, needing only three years to complete his curriculum. The thought of a child going into college when at the same time his peers are toiling away with fractions and decimals is an amazing sight to behold. Currently, Sho is in medical school, going for is doctorate and Ph.D. at the same time. He estimates that he will be done with medical school when he is about nineteen, having completed seven years of medical school. He estimates his IQ to be in excess of two hundred (Prodigies ...on 60 Minutes.)
Greg Smith is another prodigy who isn’t as advanced as Sho but is advanced enough to be graduating high school at age nine. His parents also discovered his gift early when he was only fourteen months old. They said that he was able to repeat verbatim books read to him by his parents. At eighteen months, Greg was already able to do addition and subtraction. His IQ has yet to have a number put to it, but it is in the top ¼-1/2 percentile. In 2006, Greg graduated college with a masters in mathematics and is not sure where his future is going to take him (Prodigies ...on 60 Minutes.)
Jay Greenberg is a prodigy that excels in music theory rather than math and science. He has been described as a master composer on par with Mozart. His brain understands complex music theory as second nature. He says that his music is all being written in his head and what he composes is just writing down his thoughts as they come by. When he was eleven, he received a full scholarship for music school and took classes at ages eleven through twelve that most third year college students were taking. At the age of twelve he had written a multi-faceted orchestral piece for a full orchestra in just a few hours (Prodigies ...on 60 Minutes.)
What makes these three children different than the rest of us? You can say that they are simply smarter than us, but it isn’t as cut and dry as that. The way that their brains are wired allows them to understand complex ideas with more ease than the rest of us. But, does that mean that they are more intelligent? Maybe; but maybe not. When put into perspective, these children have it easier than the rest of us, but it does not mean that they are above us. Everyone is capable of achieving what these boys have but those people cannot do it in the same time frame as the prodigies can. Their brains allow them to understand something that would take an average person about a week to learn in about an hour. Both parties learn the same information but one is able to do more in the time frame it takes the other to learn the same thing. Given an infinite amount of time and perseverance, anyone of any IQ should be able to graduate medical school. How long it takes them depends on the person’s IQ. As IQ increases, so does a person’s ability and speed to understand information and vice versa. So, in one light these prodigies are smarter than us and in another, they are just getting a head start on us but we are able to catch up in due time.
One interesting theory about child prodigies is if they go into more difficult fields of expertise because they think that is what is expected of them by society. The mainstream media seems to concentrate on prodigies that excel in fields that society has deemed difficult like math, science and music theory. Prodigies that excel in literature and art seem to be out of the limelight. It is an interesting theory that has yet to have explored but history has shown us that the prodigies that excel in literature and art are not praised until they become adults. One example of this is H.G Lovecraft. He was able to recite poetry at age two, was reading by age three and was writing stories by age seven. He then became famous during his adulthood when his works were starting to be noticed and published (Penguin Classics.)
On the other spectrum of brilliance we have Savant Syndrome. This is a condition where a person with an overall limited mental ability excels in a certain skill (Myers 310.) Most people with savant syndrome are autistic which scientists think is one of the keys to people having savant syndrome. Autism sufferers usually have poor social skills, narrow interests and a love of repetition. The fact that people with savant syndrome usually excel in one very specific field further supports this theory.
Kim Peek is the most famous person with savant syndrome on earth. Kim became widely know after the move Rain Man starring Dustin Hoffman was released and the world became aware that savant syndrome existed. Kim possesses a memory that is unmatched by any other person on earth. His brain contains an exorbitant amount of information that Kim can access at a moment’s notice. He has memorized over seventy-six hundred books, knows all
Another savant that is starting to get world-wide recognition is Daniel Tammet. His savantdom is in mathematics. He is able to do complex calculations in his head and go to more decimal places than the average computer can. How Daniel differs from Kim is that his autism is not as strong so he is able to explain what is happening in his head. According to Daniel, he sees numbers as small sparks that go off in his brain. Every number all the way up to ten thousand has its own unique color, texture, shape and form. This means that Daniel shows signs of synesthesia but his thought process is unlike anything that has ever been documented. When Daniel sees a large figure, he sees it as a long landscape that forms the number. Each number has its own shape and size so what Daniel does in his head is simply read the landscape that appears and interprets what number is passing by in his brain. His memory is also very impressive as well. He has become a master of language with learning ten languages, including Icelandic; which he was able to learn in a week’s time. He has even gotten to the point where he is working on creating his own language. Even though Daniel is able to express himself; he is still autistic and therefore has an autistic brain. This explains the problems he had during his infancy and childhood. One day when he was a small child, Daniel suffered from terrible seizure that caused him significant brain damage. After that, Daniel would experience incidents where he would be screaming non-stop and wouldn’t stop unless his parents wrapped him up in a sheet and rocked him to sleep. Behavioral scientists attest his liking of being rocked to autism’s need for repetition. His childhood was also different as Daniel would easily become fixated upon numbers as he was trying to understand what his brain was showing him. He would just watch children play hopscotch and count their steps as his affinity for numbers grew. This caused him to become alienated and introverted in school; something that he still deals with to this day. Daniel’s explanation of his thought process has helped scientists further understand what goes on in a savant’s brain. He is living proof that a person with autism thinks in pictures rather than words. Daniel’s explanations of his thoughts have given scientists a better idea of what happens in the savants’ brains that are unable to explain what their though process is like. (Daniel Tammet - The Boy With The Incredible Brain.)
Alonzo Clemons is a savant that is unlike Kim and Daniel. His skill lies in his sculpting ability. He is able to perfectly sculpt any animal he has seen for just a few seconds without having to reference the subject a second time. Most of his references that he sculpts from are pictures he has seen in books. Like other savants, Alonzo thinks in pictures and can transform a two dimensional picture into a three dimensional image. It is almost like Alonzo is just copying the image he sees in his head rather than sculpting from mere thoughts. One of his caretakers has attested that Alonzo is compelled to sculpt rather than do it for pleasure. She recalled an incident where Alonzo was in a mental institution and has his clay taken away. He was instructed that when he learned to tie his shoes and comb his hair that he would be able to get his clay back. Alonzo figured out that if he broke the window in his room that a maintenance worker would replace the window and administer putty around the window. Alonzo would proceed to pick that putty out of the window frame and sculpt with it. Alonzo has left brain hemisphere damage which prevents him from being able to easily form sentences, makes him unable to learn how to read and he cannot understand mathematics (Savant syndrome, Beautiful minds.)
The findings from Daniel applied to Alonzo and Kim gives a better idea of savantdom. It also supports the theory that there are latent savants out there that are unable to show their skills to the world. This is easily seen when you theorize what would happen if Kim and Alonzo switched abilities. Kim, with his poor motor skills would be hard-pressed to sculpt as Alonzo with his inability to read would be unable to fully harness his amazing memory.
What I have been leaving off on these paragraphs is a deeper look on whether or not these savants are really intelligent. In one light, they are. They are able to do things on par with computers and in such a way that no one else is capable of. In another light, they are simply nothing but computers, spitting back stored information or recreating imagines they see in their heads. The lack of the ability to apply their knowledge is what makes one consider whether or not it is intelligence.
On a personal note, I feel that intelligence applies to anyone with a skill. As stated above, given the right situation, anyone is capable of anything. Therefore, everyone is capable of intelligence and they already possess the potential for greatness.
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