The Prodigy's Cousin (28 page)

Alex's little brother, William, technically just completed fourth grade. But he's a couple of years ahead of grade level in most subjects, and he's almost finished the tenth-grade math curriculum. In a math competition for eighth-grade students, he placed first in the school.

His mind continues to amaze—and, often, delight—his family, friends, and teachers. When William was seven and taking a seventh-grade math class, another student asked whether it was theoretically possible to raise an exponent by another exponent—2 squared, to the power of 3, to the power of 4, for example. His teacher, Josh, answered that it would be a big number, but it was possible. A few minutes later, William began rattling off numbers: 16,777,216. Josh asked another student to check it on the calculator; that student verified the figure. William had correctly calculated the eight-digit answer in his head.

He computes ages in binary and hexadecimal. Once, when Lucie came downstairs, he told her the new population density (in person per square kilometer) of the upstairs of the house. During a conversation between Alex and Lucie about women's suffrage, William chimed in by reciting the year in which each of the Canadian provinces gave women the right to vote. The books on his bedside table include a treatise on infinity and an overview of physics concepts. He still plays the piano and has found some music apps that allow him to compose multi-instrument pieces. He's recently taken up writing computer code.

There are still challenges for William. Transitions between activities can be difficult; he requires prompting throughout the day.

But it's been a landmark year for him socially. He's developed several close friends who often request playdates. His anxiety level has dropped, and he's increasingly willing to try new things (Lucie whipped out her credit card the second he showed interest in jujitsu).
He, too, was singled out to speak at a school assembly based on his communication skills.

Alex and William both recently opted for a summer of personal projects and unstructured fun instead of day camps. The family has a pool and a trampoline, but Lucie has to prod them to go out and play; they still find the mental gymnastics they can do inside to be the most captivating sort of activity.

“Both kids are very bright, but my priority is that they're happy,” Lucie said. “I don't care if they don't win a Nobel Prize. I just want them to be happy and to have a social circle that's supportive. I want them to be around people who are healthy for them and truly appreciate them for who they are. That's what I want in life for them;
that's
successful.”

Writing this book introduced many wonderful people into our lives, and
The Prodigy's Cousin
would never have existed without them. Our lovely agent, Rachel Vogel, is a staunch advocate and trusted friend who offered a steady hand at every turn. We are grateful to everyone at Current who devoted so much time and thoughtfulness to shaping this book, including publisher Adrian Zackheim; executive editor Eric Nelson; our editors, Maria Gagliano, Emily Angell, and Jesse Maeshiro; and editorial assistant Leah Trouwborst. Associate publisher and marketing director Will Weisser, publicity director Tara Gilbride, publicist Taylor Fleming, and publicity assistant Kaitlyn Boudah brought tremendous energy, creativity, and enthusiasm to this project.

Thank you to the other members of the Penguin Random House team who did so much for this book, including Karl Spurzem for the jacket design, Leonard Telesca for the interior design, Ingrid Sterner for her eagle eye during the copyedit, and Bonnie Soodek for handling subsidiary rights. Thank you to the managing editorial and production teams who worked hard to keep this book moving along, including senior production editor Bruce Giffords, executive managing editor Tricia Conley, senior production editor Jeannette Williams, and production manager Madeline Rohlin. We are also grateful to Jane Cavolina for pitching in with the endnotes.

Many friends and colleagues offered feedback at various stages of this project, including Soren Aandahl, Jennifer Caughey, Bryan Choi, Geraldine Cremin, Caitríona Palmer, Sonali Shah Pier, J. Maarten Troost, Diane Young, and Alexandra Zapruder. The members of the
East Side Writers in Providence and the D.C. Science Writers Association freelancers' group offered thoughtful comments and friendship. Joe Camoriano was an enthusiastic supporter of this project and created a knockout book trailer. To everyone at the Writers Room DC: thanks for making it fun.

Joanne's research couldn't have been done without the psychology department at Ohio State University; her research partners, including Chris Bartlett, Stephen Petrill, and Guy Rouleau; and funding from the Marci and Bill Ingram Research Fund for Autism Spectrum Disorders and Ohio State. We also want to acknowledge all the prodigies with whom Joanne has worked over the years. Only a few are profiled in this book, but each one is not only marvelously talented, but also charming, bighearted, and fun to hang out with.

We would like to thank the scientists, experts, journalists, and other professionals who shared their time and their insights with us, including Tania Barkat, Julia Bascom, Ryan Bogdan, Carrie Borrero, Bruce Cuthbert, Geraldine Dawson, Roger Detels, Doug Detterman, Deborah Fein, Jason Flannick, Uta Frith, Nancy Greenspan, Matthew Hill, Gero Hütter, Vicki Jenkins, Maria Kozhevnikov, Francis S. Lee, Jean Mercer, Laurent Mottron, Daniel Notterman, Adam Piore, Allan Snyder, Pablo Tebas, and Darold Treffert. For additional great stories, thank you to Audrey Curran, Gerald Mastellone, Michael Mastellone, Sara Mastellone, Donna McPeek, Gerri Ruthsatz, and Judy Ruthsatz.

We owe a special thank you to David Feldman, a smart, funny, gracious, and thoughtful human being who gave us an insider's view of his early days as a prodigy researcher and made every interview more fun than work. His thinking very much advanced our own, and his zest for his work inspired us at every turn. Our sincere appreciation to David for his boundless encouragement.

We're grateful to Jim for cheering us on at every step of this journey and for accompanying Joanne on that first fateful trip to Louisiana and her many adventures since. Thank you to Dan for poring over every draft, going to prodigious lengths to create more time in
our lives for this book, and for the constant support. Kyle braved the icy roads on several harrowing prodigy road trips, and Ryan kept Joanne's computer running despite its best efforts. Katherine and Jack provided very creative edits to the manuscript and lots of squishy hugs. Our heartfelt gratitude to Bob and Dianne Stephens, Julian (Jim) Ruthsatz, and the late Marie Mastellone. Our whole family shared our enthusiasm for this story, making every part of the process all the more exciting.

Finally, a very warm and heartfelt thank you to those we profiled in this book, along with their families, teachers, and friends, who added great depth and perspective to their stories, including Alex, William, Lucie, Kathy, and Josh; Greg and Terre Grossman; Lauren, Doug, and Nancy Voiers; Jonathan Russell and Eve Weiss; the late Richard Wawro, Mike Wawro, and Laurence A. Becker; Jacob Barnett, Kristine Barnett, and Becky Pearson; Jourdan Urbach and Eric Drier; Josh Tiessen, Zac Tiessen, Julie Tiessen, and Valerie Jones; Autumn and Doug de Forest; Ping Lian Yeak, Sarah S. H. Lee, and Rosa C. Martinez; and Timothy Ray Brown and Dave Purdy. This book would not have been possible without their tireless cooperation, and we are deeply indebted to them for their kindness, generosity, and patience with our endless follow-up questions. Most of all, we are grateful for the way they welcomed us into their lives and shared their stories. We find them inspiring; we hope you do,
too.

Epigraph

“To call specific”
:
Ogden R. Lindsley, “Can Deficiency Produce Specific Superiority—the Challenge of the Idiot Savant,”
Exceptional Children
31, no. 5 (1965): 225–32.

Introduction

Others had argued
:
A few classic works and review articles on the importance of general intelligence, practice time, and skills specific to a particular field include Howard Gardner,
Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences
(New York: Basic Books, 1983) (skills specific to a particular field); K. Anders Ericsson, Ralf Th. Krampe, and Clemens Tesch-Römer, “The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance,”
Psychological Review
100, no. 3 (1993): 363–406 (practice time); Michael J. A. Howe, Jane W. Davidson, and John A. Sloboda, “Innate Talents: Reality or Myth?,”
Behavioral and Brain Sciences
21, no. 3 (1998): 339–442 (practice time); Frank L. Schmidt and John Hunter, “General Mental Ability in the World of Work: Occupational Attainment and Job Performance,”
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
86, no. 1 (2004): 162–73 (general intelligence); Arthur R. Jensen,
The g Factor: The Science of Mental Ability
(Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1998) (general intelligence).

it was the combination
:
For more information on this theory, see Douglas K. Detterman and Joanne Ruthsatz, “Toward a More Comprehensive Theory of Exceptional Abilities,”
Journal for the Education of the Gifted
22, no. 2 (1999): 148–58; Douglas K. Detterman and Joanne M. Ruthsatz, “The Importance of Individual Differences for Exceptional Achievement,” in
Talent Development IV: Proceedings from the 1998 Henry B. and Jocelyn Wallace National Research Symposium on Talent Development,
ed. Nicholas Colangelo and Susan G. Assouline (Scottsdale, Ariz.: Great Potential Press, 2001), 135–54; Joanne Ruthsatz et al., “Becoming an Expert in the
Musical Domain: It Takes More Than Just Practice,”
Intelligence
36, no. 4 (2008): 330–38.

College-level musicians
:
Ruthsatz et al., “Becoming an Expert in the Musical Domain.” This trend held when just the high school band members were considered: the higher the students' music achievement, the higher their IQ, domain-specific skills, and practice time. The same was true at the college level, although for these students only the relationship between practice time and achievement was statistically significant.

Following the lead
:
Thomas R. Insel and Bruce N. Cuthbert, “Brain Disorders? Precisely,”
Science,
May 1, 2015.

Chapter 1: A Warehouse of a Mind

She used to encounter it a lot
:
The events in this chapter described by Lucie come from telephone interviews conducted on Sept. 4 and 12 and Oct. 12, 2014, July 12, 2015, and Oct. 20, 2015 (with occasional input from Mike); and e-mail. In addition, Lucie provided videos, photographs, and a written summary of Alex's and William's development dating from 2012.

He consumed everything
:
The “warehouse” description of William's mind comes from a multi-session psycho-educational assessment, Dec. 5, 2012, Dec. 13, 2012, and Jan. 22, 2013.

Within months, Lucie sensed
:
The details of Alex's development come from Lucie, as well as educational and medical reports, including his autism diagnosis, Nov. 22, 2005; his assessment for a preschool autism program, Feb. 23 and March 23, 2006; a psychological assessment, Jan. 22, 2009; a psycho-educational assessment, Jan. 6 and 20, 2010; and a psycho-educational assessment, March 19–21, 2013.

Two months later, Alex was diagnosed with autism
:
Autism diagnosis, Nov. 22, 2005.

His diagnosis was stripped away
:
Psychological assessment, Jan. 22, 2009.

William wasn't as serious
:
The details of William's development come from Lucie, as well as a telephone interview with Kathy (William's piano teacher) conducted on Oct. 10, 2014; a telephone interview with Josh (William's math teacher) conducted on Oct. 14, 2014; educational and medical reports, including his autism diagnosis, Nov. 21, 2007; an assessment for eligibility to participate in autism intervention, April 21, 2008; a psycho-educational assessment, March 6, April 3 and 17, 2010; a medical assessment, July 29, 2011; and a psycho-educational assessment, Dec. 5, 2012, Dec. 13, 2012, and Jan. 22, 2013.

The doctor diagnosed William
:
Autism diagnosis, Nov. 21, 2007.

He echoed the words
:
The information about William's echolalia is from his 2008 eligibility assessment for an autism intervention program. Lucie
remembers that William's speech was delayed and that even when he did begin talking, he didn't say much (he “certainly didn't have the gift of gab,” as Lucie put it). She doesn't recall his echolalia, but at the time she was still putting a lot of blood, sweat, and tears into helping Alex, so she says it's possible that some things fell off the radar.

On a standardized test
:
Psycho-educational assessment, March 6, April 3 and 17, 2010.

He began taking
:
Medical assessment, July 29, 2011.

“Yes,” William piped up
:
Lucie, unlike William, doesn't have perfect recall for atlas page numbers. She's not 100 percent certain that the actual pages he recited were 34 and 35.

Chapter 2: What
Is
a Prodigy?

As articulated by Feldman
:
David Feldman, “The Mysterious Case of Extreme Giftedness,” in
The Gifted and the Talented: Their Education and Development,
ed. Harry Passow (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979), 335–51, reprinted by the Davidson Institute for Talent Development. In this article, the standard for prodigiousness is “each child performs in his chosen field at the level of an adult professional before the age of ten.” The “demanding field” aspect of the definition followed soon after. See David Feldman and Lynn T. Goldsmith,
Nature's Gambit
(New York: Basic Books, 1986).

When he was a young assistant professor
:
For an overview of Feldman's thinking regarding Piaget, see David Feldman,
Beyond Universals in Cognitive Development
(Norwood, N.J.: Ablex, 1980); and Feldman, “Mysterious Case of Extreme Giftedness.”

“So, I thought, okay”
:
David Feldman, interview, Feb. 21, 2014.

“I know it when I see it”
:
This language was famously used in associate justice Potter Stewart's concurring opinion in
Jacobellis v. Ohio,
378 U.S. 184 (1964), in reference to the difficulty of determining what constitutes hard-core pornography.

In one of the earliest
:
There was an earlier case study of a prodigy, but it has never been translated into English. See Alfred Binet, “La psychologie artistique de Tade Styka,”
L'année psychologique
15 (1908): 316–56. N. S. Leites, a Russian researcher, studied child prodigies as well, but these papers are also unavailable in English. Leites briefly references this work in an English-language article, “The Relationship Between the Developmental and the Individual in a Schoolchild's Aptitudes,”
Soviet Psychology
24, no. 2 (1985): 28–45. It is also described in Larisa V. Shavinina, “The Psychological Essence of the Child Prodigy Phenomenon: Sensitive Periods and Cognitive Experience,”
Gifted Child Quarterly
43, no. 1 (1999): 25–38.

Erwin was exceptionally pale
:
G. Révész,
The Psychology of a Musical Prodigy
(1925; reprint, London: Routledge, 1999); Kevin Bazzana,
Lost Genius: The Story of a Forgotten Musical Maverick
(Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 2007).

While he was still a child
:
Erwin's later years, unfortunately, weren't so rosy. For more information on his later life, see Bazzana,
Lost Genius
.

Révész viewed Erwin
:
Révész considered whether Erwin was an “infant prodigy” or a “precocious child,” but he ultimately rejected both possibilities. Infant prodigies' performances, he wrote, lacked personal inspiration, and their compositions tended to be monotonous, a far cry from Erwin's highly creative, emotional pieces. Nor was Erwin more broadly precocious. Precocious children were advanced in every way, Révész thought, while Erwin was adultlike only in those activities connected with his music.

The next notable contribution
:
Franziska Baumgarten,
Wunderkinder: Psychologische Untersuchungen
(Leipzig: Johann Ambrosius Barth, 1930). There is no formal translation of Baumgarten's book. David Feldman very generously shared an unofficial translation created by a former graduate student in the Tufts German department, circa the late 1970s.

Hollingworth's journey with these children
:
Details of Hollingworth's initial encounter with Edward come from Charlotte G. Garrison, Agnes Burke, and Leta S. Hollingworth, “The Psychology of a Prodigious Child,”
Journal of Applied Psychology
1, no. 2 (1917): 101–10; Leta S. Hollingworth, Charlotte G. Garrison, and Agnes Burke, “Subsequent History of E——: Five Years After the Initial Report,”
Journal of Applied Psychology
6, no. 2 (1922): 205–10; Leta S. Hollingworth,
Children Above 180 IQ
(Yonkers-on-Hudson, N.Y.: World Book, 1942).

“subnormal intelligence”
:
Alfred Binet and Th. Simon,
The Development of Intelligence in Children (the Binet-Simon Scale),
trans. Elizabeth S. Kite (Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins, 1916).

But over time, the test
:
Kirk A. Becker, “History of the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scales: Content and Psychometrics,”
Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scales, Fifth Edition, Assessment Service Bulletin No. 1
(2003), http://www.assess.nelson.com/pdf/sb5-asb1.pdf; Deborah L. Ruf, “Use of the SB5 in the Assessment of High Abilities,”
Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scales, Fifth Edition, Assessment Service Bulletin No. 3,
http://www.assess.nelson.com/pdf/sb5-asb3.pdf.

In the modern version
:
Ruf, “Use of the SB5 in the Assessment of High Abilities.”

But the version that Hollingworth used
:
Lewis Madison Terman,
The Measurement of Intelligence
(Cambridge, Mass.: Riverside Press, 1916); Ruf, “Use of the SB5 in the Assessment of High Abilities.”

Edward's background
:
Garrison, Burke, and Hollingworth, “Psychology of a Prodigious Child”; Hollingworth, Garrison, and Burke, “Subsequent History of E——”; Hollingworth,
Children Above 180 IQ
.

“nearly useless to
look
for these children”
:
Hollingworth,
Children Above 180 IQ,
xiii.

Hollingworth described Edward
:
Garrison, Burke, and Hollingworth, “Psychology of a Prodigious Child,” 105; Hollingworth,
Children Above 180 IQ,
142.

she merely meant
:
Hollingworth,
Children Above 180 IQ,
153.

he decided to include
:
Feldman, “Mysterious Case of Extreme Giftedness.”

Feldman found three children
:
These children were later described in Feldman and Goldsmith,
Nature's Gambit
.

He gave them each
:
Feldman, “Mysterious Case of Extreme Giftedness”; Feldman,
Beyond Universals in Cognitive Development.

a more rigorous scientific debate
:
For a good description of the debate around this definition, see David Feldman and Martha J. Morelock, “Prodigies and Savants,” in
The Cambridge Handbook of Intelligence,
ed. Robert J. Sternberg and Scott Barry Kaufman (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 210–34.

“I said it many times”
:
Feldman, interview, Feb. 21, 2014.

three additional children
:
Feldman and Goldsmith,
Nature's Gambit
.

“any theory worth its salt”
:
Ibid., 109.

The difficulty of using
:
Martha J. Morelock, “The Profoundly Gifted Child in Family Context” (Ph.D. diss., Tufts University, 1995).

He went on to earn
:
Amy Burkdoll, “Latest Accomplishment: 14-Year-Old Genius Gets His Master's Degree,”
Tuscaloosa News,
Aug. 8, 1998; Erica Goode, “The Uneasy Fit of the Precocious and the Average,”
New York Times,
March 12, 2002; Brian Dakss, “$1M to Child Prodigy in AOL's ‘Gold Rush,'” CBS News, Nov. 10, 2006.