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The Wisdom of Psychopaths
In this engrossing journey into the lives of psychopaths and their infamously crafty behaviors, the renowned psychologist Kevin Dutton reveals that there is a...
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Parents often wonder what their little ones are absorbing from them. For example, my mother had a wonderful vocabulary. So it may be more than a family fable that when I was asked as a two-year-old whether I was wet, I allegedly responded, “No, I’m saturated.” Then again, my father has always tended to interpret things quite literally, which may explain why, a year or two later, my supposed response to the question of how my favorite record went was “’round and around and around.” (This all happened shortly after the invention of movable type, when music was literally pressed onto large vinyl disks that “turned” on what was fittingly called a turntable. For more on turntables, see this space in the June issue.)
I was reminded of preposterously precocious utterances by tiny tykes during a brief talk that string theorist Brian Greene gave at the opening of the 2011 World Science Festival in New York City on June 1. Greene said he sometimes wondered about how much information small children pick up from standard dinner-table conversation in a given home. He revealed that he got some data to mull over when he hugged his three-year-old daughter and told her he loved her more than anything in the universe, to which she replied, “The universe or the multiverse?”
Closer to home (well, my home at least), my seven-year-old grandnephew has often exhibited an interest in various science and math topics. He, like many preschoolers at the time, was deeply disappointed by the 2006 demotion of Pluto from the family of planets. So great was his grief then that when I asked him about Pluto’s fall, he only said, “I don’t want to talk about it.” More recently, he was a passenger when his grandfather exited a highway onto a cloverleaf that took them off their northern route toward the east, then south and then west onto the next road. With that maneuver complete, the kid said, “That was a 270-degree turn.” Which he either learned from his smart parents or from watching the X Games.
Of course, not all children are destined for a life in the sciences. Many, if not most, seem well suited, if you will, for the law. Take the case of another seven-year-old of my acquaintance who was given “five more minutes” by her parents to enjoy the beach. When they sounded the alarm to leave, she announced that it was simply unfeasible for that much time to have passed: “that wath like 10 thecondth,” she explained. Of course, it is possible that she had been moving at relativistic speeds, in which case both she and her parents could have been correct.
After I turned this column in to Scientific American editor in chief Mariette DiChristina, she told a story about her then five-year-old daughter Mallory’s ability to calculate rapidly. Mallory wondered aloud how old Mariette would be when Mallory reached her mom’s age, 42 at the time. “Let’s see...,” Mariette began. Then Mallory answered her own question, laughing at her mother’s silliness for even bothering to try to do the math: “Oh, Mom, you’ll be dead!”
The young people discussed so far are obviously charming and insightful. And yet for truly scary little-kid brain activity, it’s hard to beat the very young Carl Friedrich Gauss. As legend has it, the budding mathematician was in grade school when his instructor assigned him the mundane task of adding up all the numbers from 1 to 100. The teacher might have been hoping to catch some zzz’s in the corner while Gauss would be busy adding 1 to 2 to get 3, then 3 to that sum to get 6, then 4 to that sum to get 10, ad literally nauseam. But just a moment passed—perhaps merely 10 thecondth—before Gauss announced that the answer was 5,050. Which it sure is.
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12 Comments
Add CommentOf course all of these wonderful abilities can be traced to the parents (those fortunate enough to have been trained in science-the greatest tool we have). For the rest of us (whose parents were standard dummies) all we can do is hope the republicans won't totally destroy THIS country's science funding and teachers.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis seems obvious. If you don't talk about things but poops and TV then that's what your kids will know. If you talk about biology and physics then that's what they'll know. The children aren't necessarily extraordinary, they're just picking up language as children do. You would be shocked, possibly, at the knowledge, children of tribal peoples, have of local flora, fauna and behaviour. But it's just what is important to their family and is talked about all the time.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI know I have an advantage as an adult, but I would expect from the perspective of a child he noted/stumbled upon that, like folding a page 1+100=101, 2+99=101, etc continued always=101 then got the sum is really 101*50 (or half the series total). This is easier math for our minds to approach. Either that, or he really IS a genius.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe best example of this phenomenon is observed by getting a child into a Hollywood movie: the child immediately becomes a supernaturally witty adult.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThough I would like to claim that my children got their smarts from their parents, I fear that I can not. I do have a BS in Biology and a very smart and intuitive mother. They have a wisdom and intelligence tat is far beyond both of us. I remember driving to my mother's. In the back seat children's seats one of my twin boys, looking up at the moon asked "Are we on the bottom now?" I asked back "Do you mean that it is night now and the sun is on the other side of the planet?" "Yes" No. We are a giant sphere, like a very big ball. There is no up or down in space. We have up and down on the earth and gravity is trying to drawn us down to the center of the earth. Then we are then falling up from the center of the earth. We are not on the bottom we are just on the side that the sun is not shining on." "OH! Okay" They were three years old.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMy eldest daughter Jeri was 19 months old when her brother was born. As we were picking up mother and child at the hospital, a nurse leaned down and asked Jeri how she liked her new "dolly." Jeri responded "That's no dolly. That's my brother."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs Grace Slick sang, many years ago "There are children being born who will amaze you with their minds."
,,,if we let them,,,
wonderful article.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWell it is often the luck of having parents which knowledge; but than something other comes at play. My mother was a kindergarten teacher and although she was an excellent learner she had only middle highschool because back then girls didn't go to university. Anyway to be short she had vision, bringing all the educational toys back home. I spend holiday after holiday playing and satisfying my curious mind. Reading meant access to knowledge.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI call that vision the ability to see what a kid needs, to provide it and to make it hopelessly curious. This way of teaching also creates independent critical thinkers, something we lack with todays mass media. That said I know if we had real politicians with balls I would reform education yesterday because it lacks the best ingredients: passion and curiosity. This combined with self guided routes of exploration means knowledge gets delivered in the right amount on the right time with the right tools to the right kid.
Children are fast intimater because their brain developed very fast in childhood.They learned all thing very fast with the help of intimating.Recent neuroscience told us mirror neutrons help the child to intimate and to learn language.If we keep child in isolated he could not speak or learn any thing.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs I understand some babies are quickly chat up the things they want and very clever in maths. My tow brothers are not that clever in math at their small age and now they are suffering to do a good job. My mother says they were not feed well and she was hard working at the period of the pregnancy at that time.My problem is for a good baby brain is it needed to have resting mother.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI had hard time with my pregnancy. I work hard, I did marketing, I cooked, I washed , went to the office, I clean the apartment which is not that spacious.Any way with hard working and with least attention of the nation I had heart failed child, and Thalipies in legs, cystic in brain. The baby died in two months. Then my family was collapse. Since then I was single. I loos every thing with that child as my husband did not have much education in that seance to lift me.What I understand is if a child died in our country the mother is blamed by every one. The mother is unsupported in male dominant countries.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThat really sucks and I'm sorry for your loss and suffering.
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