The Prodigy's Cousin
Read The Prodigy's Cousin Online
Authors: Joanne Ruthsatz and Kimberly Stephens
CURRENT
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Copyright © 2016 by Joanne Ruthsatz and Kimberly Stephens
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ISBN 978-0-698-16860-2
Version_1
To Jim
âJ.R.
To Dan
â
K.S.
To call specific behavioral superiority a “mystery” is merely to sugarcoat scientific neglect.
âOgden R. Lindsley,
1965
This story begins on the back roads of a swampy Louisiana town. That's where, in 1998, a young couple were raising their six-year-old son, a child with round cheeks, thin lips, and a peculiar knowledge of jazz musicians.
That spring, Joanne Ruthsatz, then a psychology graduate student, took a thirty-some-hour train ride from Sandusky, Ohio, to New Orleans, rented a car, and drove through the bayou to the couple's small clapboard home.
She'd come all that way to see the boyâGarrett James.
*
He looked like a typical little kidâmedium build, towheaded, and light-eyed. He loved trucks, spoke with a southern drawl, and listened politely when his parents introduced him to “Miss Joanne.”
But he was definitely not typical. As a toddler, Garrett had crafted musical instruments out of household goodsâspoons, keys, the vent in the wallâanything he could get his tiny hands on. His aunt gave him a toy guitar for his second birthday, and he stunned his parents when he used it to re-create songs he heard on the radio.
His parents bought him a real child-sized guitar a few months later. Garrett practiced during the day; he practiced at night. He scampered
to his instrument at every opportunity, held it while chatting with his parents, and strummed during breaks in the conversation. Music pulsed through the house; eventually, Garrett's parents asked their son to practice in the basement.
Garrett's love for musicâhis
need
for musicâexploded from somewhere within him, charged through his fingertips, and burst into the world. At four years old, he performed in the family's yard, fronted a local band, and fielded invitations to play at music festivals and fairs. At one of these festivals, Garrett played in front of tens of thousands of fans. Physically, he was a speck on a sweeping stage; his famous adult co-star had to crouch down to approach eye level. When he played, thoughâa raucous, wholehearted number punctuated by foot tapping and hip swingingâhe swallowed up the empty space. Little boy became music powerhouse.
Over the next two years, Garrett performed on a jazz album, in a movie, and on TV talk shows. All without ever having taken a formal music lesson, and all before his seventh birthday.
Garrett was a fascinating kid, but at that point Joanne's visit was a lark. She was within spitting distance of her Ph.D.; she just wanted to see if a theory she'd been working on could account for Garrett's abilities.
For most of Joanne's graduate school career, she'd been studying exceptional adult and teenage performers, trying to parse out what separates the successful from the less so. The nature versus nurture debate rubbed her the wrong way; surely both have a role to play in expertise. She had been working on a new theory, one based on the idea that at least
three
factors have a role in success: general intelligence, practice time, and skills specific to a particular field.
Others had argued for the importance of each of these factors;
it was the combination of the three that was novel.
She had already taken her theory for a test-drive and found some supporting evidence.
College-level musicians scored higher on all three factors than high school musicians (who were presumably less expert):
they outwitted them on the IQ test, more successfully picked out changes in tone and rhythm (skills specific to their area of expertise), and had logged significantly more practice hours.
But could her theory account for the abilities of a child prodigyâone of those rare, preternaturally skilled, scientifically befuddling children who often outperform grown-up musicians, artists, and mathematicians? Joanne thought Garrett, an earnest, wide-eyed guitar phenom, would need an outlandish IQ and a masterful ear for music to make up for his relatively few years of practice.
Over the course of two days, Joanne gave Garrett an IQ test and a music aptitude test. Whenever there was a break, he bolted to his guitar to pick out a tune. Eventually, Garrett asked to go to McDonald's.
His timing wasn't great. Garrett still hadn't finished the memory section of the IQ test. But Joanne had three children of her own; she knew when to quit. She and Garrett, along with Garrett's mother, Sandra, drove to get lunch.
During the short trip, Joanne mulled over Garrett's test results. This kid was even more of a mystery than she had realized. Garrett had scored in the upper echelons of the music aptitude test, detecting changes in tone and rhythm with more accuracy than almost all of his age-mates, just as she had predicted he would. And he knocked the socks off the memory portion of the IQ test. He thundered through digit repetitions on his way to scoring in the ninety-ninth percentile for this section, despite having gotten tired of the testing and wrapping up early.
But the rest of Garrett's IQ-test results wasn't exactly what Joanne had expected. He did well, to be sure; there was no question that Garrett's general intelligence score was well above average. But it wasn't one in a million. He had a very high IQ, but it was nowhere near as exceptional as his abilities on the guitar.
Without a truly explosive IQ, how was he mastering music with such unbelievable speed?
At McDonald's, the trio ran into Sandra's sister, Susan, and Susan's
son, Patrick. Garrett's mother introduced Joanne to the extended family. Joanne said hello to Susan; the two sisters talked. The teenage Patrick grunted, but he never said a word. He occasionally flapped his hands. As Sandra later told Joanne, Patrick was autistic.
Joanne's mind began to spin.
Did Garrett's talent have something to do with his cousin's autism?
It was a peculiar idea. Garrett didn't
have
autism. He didn't appear to have any of the typical symptoms. You could have scoured the academic literature on child prodigiesâwhat little there was of it in 1998âwithout finding any suggestion that autism might lie at the root of the kids' abilities.
But Joanne had seen it for herself. In the fluorescent light of a hamburger joint, two cousins, two biologically related children, stood side by side, one courted by the press for his musical prowess, the other struggling to master daily living skills.
By better understanding one child, could you help the other?
Fast-forward eighteen years, and Joanne has tracked down dozens of prodigies. To date, she's worked closely with more than thirtyâthe largest research sample of these rare children ever created. Their stories border on the fantastic: a two-year-old who loved to spell words like “algorithm” and “confederation”; a six-year-old painter captivated by Georgia O'Keeffe; a seven-year-old violinist with a powerful benevolent streak.
Joanne and her daughter, Kimberly Stephens, wrote the scholarly papers that stemmed from these encounters. But as the research advanced, they (hereinafter “we”) realized that the relationship between prodigy and autism had implications that went far beyond an ivory-tower debate over the source of extraordinary talent.
Thus, this book. To explore the prodigies' lives and examine the underpinnings of their abilities, we draw on Joanne's years of research; dozens of interviews with the kids and their parents; media accounts of the children's lives; the medical records, education reports, and videos and photographs provided by the families; and
previous child prodigy research. To flesh out how the prodigies' abilities connect with autism, we draw on hundreds of academic studies; the interviews we conducted with experts in the field; and extensive conversations with the families and friends of the autists we profile. It was an incredible amount of raw material, bursting with gems of information about extraordinary children, intrepid scientists, startling research findings, and fiercely devoted parents. We use it here to tell a scientific detective story of sorts in which we investigate what makes prodigies tick.
Child prodigy studies isn't a particularly crowded field. Despite perennial fascination with these children, research into the roots of their abilities is quite sparse. If there were a conference just for those who have firsthand experience working with prodigies, the organizers wouldn't rack up much of a catering bill; at best there would be a handful of attendees.
At least partly for this reason, child prodigies' abilities are a long-running mystery. How
can
a kid who still travels by car seat compose classical music or pontificate about astrophysics? But once you consider the possibility that the prodigies' startling skills might have something to do with autism, pieces start to fall into place. We'll begin by using the story of two brothers (one of whom counts corn kernels to check for Fibonacci numbers and plays Christmas carols
backward
on his ukulele for fun) to illustrate just how thin the line between prodigy and autism can be.
Then we'll follow the research trail as evidence of a potential link piles up. It's a journey that starts with the early struggle to sort out who qualifies as a child prodigy, which turns out to be a surprisingly complicated question. We'll dive into the prodigies' common attributes, such as extraordinary memories, eagle eyes for detail, and voracious appetites for their chosen subjectsâmany of which are also common attributes of autism. These traits shape the prodigies' lives, as we'll see
in stories like that of the violinist who notices slight variations in the sounds of the subway chimes and the child physicist whose mind is a steel trap for numbers. We'll also take a close look at another, lesser-known characteristic of child prodigiesâextreme empathyâand explore whether it is yet another trait that links prodigy to autism. Finally, we'll examine the emerging evidence that prodigy and autism may share genetic roots.
Along the way, we'll investigate the kids' family lives and the role the parents play in raising a child prodigy. We'll delve into the case of a typically developing teenager who became completely engrossed with music after he smacked his head against a church floor and explore whether his story means that such abilities exist somewhere inside us all. We'll dig into the evidence that suggests there are important underlying differences among the prodigies, distinct cognitive attributes that might prevent a math prodigy, for example, from becoming an art prodigy.
Toward the end, we'll explore the possibilityâtenuous yet tantalizingâthat studying child prodigies might advance our understanding of autism. It's a possibility with a lot of ifs (the genetic connection between the two would have to be confirmed, for starters). But if studying child wonders could potentially improve our understanding of autism, we suspect that a few more people might start showing up for those hypothetical child prodigy conferences.
Finally, a note on autism and the language we'll use in this story.
Autism varies a great deal in severity, and those diagnosed with autism (and their families) can face steep challenges. This is a book about the riddle presented by children with extreme abilities. We discuss autism research, but we do not focus on the serious difficulties that autists and their families can encounter, though this topic is clearly deserving of sustained and serious attention.
Changing perceptions of autism have led to some disagreement over whether autism should be considered a brain disorder that should be
cured or whether it's more properly viewed as a unique way of seeing the world that should be valued and, when necessary, accommodated.
This relates to a split over terminology: Should someone diagnosed with autism be described as an “individual with autism” or as “an autistic”? Those who view autism as a disorder often prefer “individual with autism,” while those who view autism as a distinct style of thinking and as part of an individual's identity are often partial to “an autistic” or “an autist” or “an autistic person.”
We primarily use the term “autist” in this book, mostly because it provides a concise parallel to the term “prodigy,” making, we hope, for easier reading. Similarly, we refer to autism and other conditions listed in the fifth edition of the
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders
(the
DSM-5
),
*
a book that is often referred to as psychiatry's bible, as “brain disorders” rather than “mental disorders.”
Following the lead of two prominent scientists at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), we prefer this terminology because it better reflects these conditions' neural roots.