“Exceptionally Gifted Boys and Their Parents”, 1980-10-01 (; backlinks; similar):
In an effort to explore some of the possible early-experiential and family variables involved in the achievement of eminence we have developed a model of cognitive and personality development and have undertaken a longitudinal study of two distinct groups of exceptionally gifted boys and their families. In this report, early similarities and differences between two groups of exceptionally gifted boys and their families will be explored. Methodology: This is a longitudinal study of two samples of healthy, exceptionally gifted boys and their families. One group consisted of 26 of the highest scorers in the 1976 Math Talent Search conducted by Julian Stanley (197450ya, 1977); the second group of 26 boys living in southern California were selected only on the basis of IQ’s of 150 or higher.
…Factors included for study were parents’ and grand-parents’ educational attainment, parents’ and subjects’ birth-order, subjects’ and parents’ creative potential, and subjects’ cognitive giftedness.
Both samples were well-educated and had attained statistically-significantly more formal education than the national norms.
The birth-orders of the two samples are what one would expect from the literature of gifted children and they are not statistically-significantly different from one another.
A surprisingly remarkable similarity exists between the two samples of cognitively gifted boys, although they were selected a year apart, a continent apart, and on the basis of distinctly different test performances. We expected them to perform better on the figural and the math/science subtests of the Wallach-Kogan and BIC measures, respectively, and the high-IQ sample to perform statistically-significantly better on the verbal and the art/writing subtests. Instead, the differences between the samples are slight and not statistically-significant. At minimum, these results suggest that the two samples are each made of highly talented, cognitively gifted boys in the ares of art/writing and math/science as measured by standard instruments. Second, these results further indicate the versatility that accompanies exceptional giftedness…Table 1 shows that the parents of both groups of exceptionally gifted boys are themselves exceptionally creative. Parents of both groups outperformed Duke University subjects. Furthermore, the parents definitely showed more creative potential than their children. It is the parents of the high-IQ boys who have the highest creativity scores of all.
…We believe the results of the present study and those of Milgram et al show that cognitive giftedness and creative giftedness are very much related to one another and may be manifestations of the same complex, multi-faceted abilities. Therefore, it should not surprise us that there is a large degree of family cognitive and creative similarity.