It is possible for human beings to possess a level of intelligence far greater than that for which men are praised as "geniuses.'' There are people alive right now who are in the "beyond human'' category in intelligence. They are not recognized for what they are because their inner lives are beyond the comprehension of ordinary humanity. There are two requirements for achieving this level of intellect: a new "ply'' of reason, and subjugation of automatic belief by the wish to know the truth .

A nonprofit institute for the understanding of differences in learning

This reliance on social contact is so integrated into our species that it is hard to imagine a completely asocial human. However, severe developmental disorders sometimes give us a glimpse of the importance of social contact.

Evidence is presented which indicate that these children spontaneously display only a fraction of their knowledge, disguising their real cognitive capacity by their autistic pattern of behaviour... No academic researcher can command the required knowledge of the individually specific autistic child to be able to extract the knowledge that the child does not voluntary reveal. Only full time workers with the child or someone who is prepared to invest months in close interaction with specific autistic children, can hope, with the utilization of intrusive techniques, to obtain anything like true assessments and measurements of their real knowledge and abilities, hidden behind their general and specific blocking behaviour. This is the reason that some parents and a few teachers have been successful with a few children, but interaction and success with all autistic children is possible, and their autistic pattern of behaviour can be overcome to a certain extent. Parents and teachers of autistic children should maintain hope, enthusiasm and high level of expectation.

Spatial thinking is a way of organising things in my head. It is not visual (though some people think visual and spatial are synonymous) but involves connections between things in a format like 3-dimensional or more-dimensional space.

The average man does not care to look critically into abstract things, nor speculate over fine shades in meanings of words or the turning of phrases.

Estimates for the prevalence of mental retardation in autistic children and adults range from 25 to 70 percent or more, and when autistics do exhibit phenomenal skills (like Rain Man), researchers don't consider that "true" intelligence. Health workers routinely assess autistics using a standard IQ test known as the Wechsler test. But this test requires that children understand oral commands, a trait that many autistic children have trouble with. Cognitive neuroscientist Laurent Mottron of the Hôpital Rivière-des-Prairies, Montreal and colleagues noticed that autistic children did poorly on the verbal comprehension part of the Wechsler but exceedingly well on a part that tests non-verbal intelligence and reasoning.

It's too easy to project realities onto those who can't verbally explain it for themselves; children, animals. It is folly to assume all children or all animals think or experience in any particular way. It is best perhaps to spend time with a blank mind to sense these things for yourself on a case by case basis. But first one would have to become mindless, thoughtless, and that may be such a hard task for anyone whose head is filled with compelling visual or auditory thoughts all the time.

It is yet unknown whether individuals with and without savant abilities being affected by the same mental disorder display differences with regard to their intelligence profile. To examine this issue, we compared the test performance of 33 savant and 26 nonsavant autistic subjects using the Wechsler Intelligence Scales-Revised for children or adults (WISC-R/WAIS-R). Data analysis revealed inconsistent results with rather negligible differences concerning the compound of cognitive capacities. However, savant and nonsavant individuals with autism exhibited a significant mean difference on the subscale Digit Span. This finding may indicate less impaired working memory and executive function in autistic savants or rote memory and low-level processing being core savant skills. Several limitations of the study are discussed.

Basic units of language; early language acquisition; growth in language; increased complexity; generalization; focus

The idea of a fixed intelligence has given way to a more flexible perception of gradual intellectual development dependent on external stimulation. Our intelligence, therefore, is our singular, collective ability to act and react in an everchanging world.

Study of socially situated intelligence does not merely provide an important add-on to other faculties of intelligence, but that human intelligence is embedded in a social being and can in this way not be separated from nonsocial kinds of intelligence.

In-depth reading evaluations of these ADHD youngsters often reveal that rather than having an attention disorder, they are simply kinesthetic learners they need to engage in gross motor (large-muscle) activity to learn best.

We cannot measure intelligence when we have never defined it, and we cannot speak of its hereditary basis after it has been indistinguishably fused with a thousand educational and environmental influences from the time of conception to the school age.

Solid evidence is emerging that what psychological tests measure is only a part of the entire portrait of what intelligence is. Although verbal ability is carefully measured by existing tests, social competence is generally not measured at all.

No test is able to measure all abilities that lie within the complex domain of intelligence. Indeed, they measure only a small portion of skills that might rightfully define the domain of intelligent human behavior.

Nearly all genetic data have been obtained using measures developed from this psychometric perspective, primarily IQ tests.

The uneven profile of performance on standard assessments of intelligence and the high incidence of savant skills have prompted interest in the nature of intelligence in autism. The present paper reports the first group study of speed of processing in children with autism (IQ 1 SD below average) using an inspection time task. The children with autism showed inspection times as fast as an age-matched group of young normally developing children (IQ 1 SD above average). They were also significantly faster than mentally handicapped children without autism of the same age, even when these groups were pairwise matched on Wechsler IQ. To the extent that IT tasks tap individual differences in basic processing efficiency, children with autism in this study appear to have preserved information processing capacity despite poor measured IQ. These findings have implications for the role of general and specific cognitive systems in knowledge and skill acquisition: far from showing that children with autism are unimpaired, we suggest that our data may demonstrate the vital role of social insight in the development of manifest "intelligence."

There are four main factors that put gifted visual spatial learners at risk: they have well above average intelligence, they are creative and divergent thinkers, they are physically and emotionally sensitive and they have an extreme visual spatial learning style coupled with an auditory sequential information processing problem.

Talents that selectively facilitate the acquisition of high levels of skill are said to be present in some children but not others. The evidence for this includes biological correlates of specific abilities, certain rare abilities in autistic savants, and the seemingly spontaneous emergence of exceptional abilities in young children, but there is also contrary evidence indicating an absence of early precursors of high skill levels. An analysis of positive and negative evidence and arguments suggests that differences in early experiences, preferences, opportunities, habits, training, and practice are the real determinants of excellence.

In recent years, researchers in Africa, Asia and elsewhere have found that people in non-Western cultures often have ideas about intelligence that differ fundamentally from those that have shaped Western intelligence tests.

In Professor Arthur R. Jensen's "The Nature of Intelligence and its Relation to Learning' (Melbourne Studies in Education,1978) some seven pages are devoted to an attempt to show that " intelligence' or 'general mental ability' can be identified with what is known as the g factor, a product of the factor analysis of correlations between a number of 'intelligence' tests. The theory is that all intelligence tests produce slightly different results because each one is contaminated to some extent by irrelevant factors, and these factors are not constant; but if one can analyse what all the tests test for in common then that will be 'intelligence' expressed as g. Many critics of intelligence testing, however, have held that the common factor between the tests is an illusion, that the correlations between the tests and the g these produce are only products of the way the tests are constructed - that the psychologists are finding the proof that they have themselves hidden there.

Through most of the 20th century, those little numbers have been used both to take away needed assistance and to take away hope. Yet such was not their original intent.

The first step in teaching students to become aware of how they think is to understand how you as a teacher think. The problems here are a beginning in helping you understand your own learning styles.

It is important that educators assess for learning style as soon as an autistic child enters the school system and that they adapt their teaching styles in rapport with the strengths of the student.

Information about learning styles and Multiple Intelligence (MI) is helpful for everyone especially for people with learning disabilities and Attention Deficit Disorder. Knowing your learning style will help you develop coping strategies to compensate for your weaknesses and capitalize on your strengths. This page provides an explanation of what learning styles and multiple intelligence are all about, an interactive assessment of your learning style/MI, and practical tips to make your learning style work for you.

The Basics; The Four Modalities; Small Group Techniques; Implementation; Learning Style Instruments

The goal of detecting distinctive human strengths, and using them as a basis for engagement and learning, may prove to be worthwhile, irrespective of the scientific fate of the theory.

For whatever you wish to teach, link your instructional objective to words, numbers or logic, pictures, music, the body, social interaction, and/or personal experience. If you can create activities that combine these intelligences in unique ways, so much the better!

There is a consistent difference of some 15 IQ points between the test means of American black and white citizens, and there has been a fierce debate as to whether this can be best accounted for by black intellectual inferiority or by such environmental factors as prejudice and discrimination. However, even supporters of the environmental hypothesis have neglected to apply it to the population - people with Down's Syndrome - to which it is most clearly applicable, and this failure of imagination indicates the boundaries of discourse in the field of intellectual disability. The complex relationship between racism and prejudice against people with Disability is illustrated by Dr Down's use of the term 'mongolism'. Down's characterisation of people with intellectual impairment as equivalent both to children and to people of different races fits the need for a working explanation of intellectual impairment. The characterisation is none the less worthless, and we need new frames to shape our observations.

A study of around 1,000 Australian and Dutch adolescents has pinpointed specific areas of DNA which researchers believe may explain wide variations in intelligence. They identified locations on chromosomes 2 and 6 which they suspect contain genes regulating aspects of intelligence.

The Sullivan School has only 42 students in grades 1-5, and staff know each student real well. I interviewed 3rd grade teacher, Molly Linn, who allowed me to record our brief telephone conversation a couple of days ago. We talked about the individualized nature of the awards and also about Howard Gardner's multiple intelligence models, and even about Roger Barker's work on the advantage of small schools vs. big schools.

Print the booklet or work on-line. For the best results, say each word and point to the corresponding picture. Have your child do the same. Discuss the key words.

Don't get taken by fake IQ tests. Tickle's PhD-certified IQ test will give you your true IQ based on all the intelligence scales psychologists have relied on for many years.