“Child Prodigy: A Novel Cognitive Profile Places Elevated General Intelligence, Exceptional Working Memory and Attention to Detail at the Root of Prodigiousness”, 2012-07-04 (; backlinks; similar):
Child prodigies are unusual for their early and exceptional adoption of what are traditionally thought of as adult abilities. As part of an effort to better understand the underpinnings of these extraordinary individuals’ talent, the researcher examined the cognitive and developmental profiles of 8 child prodigies by taking their developmental histories and administering the Stanford-Binet 5th ed. full scale intelligence test and the Autism-Spectrum Quotient (AQ).
The collected data reveals a startling picture. While each of the prodigies demonstrated an at least moderately elevated level of intelligence, the prodigies’ full scale IQ scores were not consistently on the extreme end of the spectrum. What was consistently extraordinary, however, was the child prodigies’ working memory scores—a category in which every prodigy tested in the 99th percentile.
Additional results suggest a previously unknown connection between child prodigies and autism. The prodigies’ family histories yielded an unlikely number of autistic relatives. And the child prodigies received elevated AQ scores with respect to attention to detail, a trait associated with autism. The prodigies did not, however, display many of the other traits typically associated with autism.
This result raises the possibility of a moderated autism that actually enables the prodigies’ extraordinary talent.
[This suggests that part of the reason for child prodigies often not achieving much, and for the low reliability of early IQ scores, is that the reason a lot of the performance is not g-loaded is because it reflects instead an uneven & precocious development of memory/motivation—like obsessive interests in narrow topics which develop working memory or other markers, which juice scores/capabilities early on but ultimately become unremarkable as children develop into adults.]