
Emotional, behavioral and social difficulties among high-IQ children [pdf] - lainon
http://www.lscp.net/persons/ramus/docs/PAID16.pdf
======
Animats
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
And it is _just_ this 5-6 year groups that has been studied here -- nothing
about older children.

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

~~~
tdb7893
In my middle school and high school I don't remember the smart kids being
bullied any more than anyone else so I would be interested in a study on that
age group. This is purely anecdotal and sample size of one but my experience
with a smart kid who got bullied he thought that people bullied him because he
was smart but in reality he was condescending and followed too many rules.

------
jplasmeier
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...](https://anchoragechambermusicfestival.org/new-music-
premieres/douglas-hofstadter/)

~~~
gkya
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
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.

~~~
gkya
This is what I love about internet: when you honestly open your heart even a
little bit, you get to read nice and cozy responses like yours. Thanks a lot
for the kind words.

I'm certainly way more positive nowadays. Over the years I've accepted myself
as I am and have seen that once I am more poised and confident and _love
myself_ , I become more and more accepted and liked by others. And when one's
nonchalant before the _ephemeral_ stuff, he's more easily content. After
adopting these ideas I've begun enjoying life in the last three-four years.

------
gokhan
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.

~~~
monkmartinez
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.

~~~
cperciva
_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.

~~~
abecedarius
Further, it's single-year cohorts that's the big break from almost all of
human history. I'd expect associating with a range of ages to be the right
thing for socialization.

------
ap22213
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
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
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.

~~~
gji
I also had a very different experience, was part of various "gifted" programs
from 4th grade until I graduated high school. Many of my classmates are doing
extremely well (grad school/consulting/tech) - I don't think problems with
these programs are intrinsic. My classmates from high school are on average
doing better though, I think there might be some survivorship bias going on.

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

------
nugget
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.

~~~
heymijo
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.

~~~
aridiculous
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.

------
kpil
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.

------
skrap
"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.

~~~
gwern
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...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_correlation#Intelligence))
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...](http://emilkirkegaard.dk/en/wp-content/uploads/From-Terman-to-
Today-A-Century-of-Findings-on-Intellectual-Precocity.pdf) , 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.)

~~~
jnicholasp
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?

~~~
gwern
Many people are alienated and feel unable to make connections to others; I
have yet to see any convincing evidence that the high IQ are especially prone
to this or have any special characteristics (besides the tendency to
congregate in self-pity clubs). Towers might have done such a thing but I
doubt any such result.

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

------
strictnein
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.

------
nom
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.

------
URSpider94
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.

