Lady Gaga may seem to have little in common with Mark Zuckerberg and Sergey Brin, other than being extremely successful. But there is a connection: all three were deemed gifted in childhood.
The idea of giftedness – possessing outstanding talent or intelligence at a young age – is, and always has been, controversial. Parents, teachers and psychologists have long argued over the nature of childhood precocity and whether labelling it does more harm than good. Many worry that designating children as gifted places undue pressure on them to succeed, setting them up for unbalanced and unhappy lives.
Until recently, little was known about what actually happens to these children when they grow up. Now, a spate of studies is providing answers and revealing the fascinating lifelong impacts of being marked as exceptional at a young age.
Advertisement
Far from growing into troubled adults, many gifted individuals appear to flourish later in life. Long-term studies suggest they are more likely than average to achieve professional success and, contrary to popular stereotypes, often enjoy better mental health. Scientists are also starting to understand what makes gifted brains so exceptional, finding that they are better integrated and can process information more efficiently, which raises the question of whether we should view giftedness as another form of neurodiversity. While that is still an open debate, what is becoming increasingly clear is that many of our assumptions about extraordinary minds – and the lives of those who possess them – may need revising.
The term “gifted” dates back to the 1920s, when – who peddled several dubious ideologies, including eugenics – began studying childhood precocity. He believed it was these children who would go on to become our most prominent leaders and thinkers.
Using a variety of questions on general knowledge, memory, numeracy and verbal dexterity, he devised a way to calculate someone’s “mental age”. Divide this by their chronological age and multiply it by 100, and you get their “intelligence quotient”, or IQ. A 10-year-old child with the mental age of an 11-year-old would have an IQ of 110, for example.
Through widespread screening across California, he selected around 1500 children with IQs of 135 or over – the top 1 per cent – then tracked their lives over the next few decades. Regular follow-ups largely confirmed his suspicions: the children excelled academically and many went on to have successful careers in the sciences, the arts and politics. The term was born.
Giftedness refers to , which is usually apparent from an early age. There isn’t a precise way to identify it. Although Terman relied on IQ, contemporary studies and programmes use various assessments centred on intelligence, academic achievement and, in some cases, creativity.
Like many historic studies, Terman’s methods and analyses fail to meet modern standards, but later investigations For instance, in the 1970s, scientists at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee began tracking more than 1600 adolescents aged 13 and under who were within the top 1 per cent for mathematical reasoning, according to their performance on college admission exams. More than 40 years later, they found these individuals “”.
Depending on the year they joined the study, between 25 and 40 per cent of them had gained doctorates, compared with just 2 per cent of the general population. They were also more likely than the average person to have earned tenure at a university, published a book or risen to the top of a Fortune 500 company. A further study, yet to be published, has found they are also more likely to engage in altruistic acts, such as pro-bono legal work, and “as they approach retirement, they’re planning to increase the amount of time they devote to volunteering”, says at Vanderbilt University, who leads this research.
A look inside the gifted brain
But what makes gifted people so exceptional? We don’t have a clear answer just yet, though researchers have started uncovering some clues, finding that these individuals have unique brain changes, which may influence how they process information.
In a ,ԱܰDZ⳦DZDz at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil and her colleagues analysed dozens of brain-imaging studies involving gifted individuals. They found that giftedness was associated with more grey matter – that is, tissue consisting mainly of the central bodies of brain cells – in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, the superior temporal gyrus and inferior parietal lobes. Because these areas play a crucial role in abstract reasoning and problem solving, this could make it easier for gifted children to excel at school and beyond, says Reuwsaat.
Academically gifted individuals also tend to have greater connectivity between brain regions. For instance, a of 30 children found that white matter – which transmits signals across brain regions – was more highly connected in those who were gifted, particularly between the hippocampus, putamen and prefrontal cortex, all areas crucial for thinking and memory. Other studies have shown that in gifted individuals, there is greater interaction between the default mode network – associated with imagination and creativity – and frontoparietal networks, which are involved in reasoning and attention. This may help them find “unusual associations between ideas”, she says, and provide greater “cognitive flexibility”.
Finally, the brains of gifted individuals may use energy more efficiently. Reuwsaat points to showing that such brains tend to have lower activity than average when completing easier problem-solving tasks. But activity then ramp ups as the difficulty increases. That suggests “an enhanced capacity to recruit additional neural resources when needed”, she says. It also differs from people with lower cognitive capacity, who are more likely to disengage from challenging problems.
But the truth is, we are only beginning to grasp what sets the gifted mind apart. “I think we can explain up to perhaps 20 per cent of the variance in IQ,” says at the University of Padua in Italy, who has studied differences in intelligence across lifespan. The other 80 per cent, he says, remains a mystery.
Given these brain differences, some research groups and organisations have suggested giftedness is a form of neurodivergence, similar to conditions like ADHD and autism. “If neurodivergence is understood broadly as naturally occurring variations in brain functioning and cognition, then there is a reasonable argument that giftedness could fit within that framework,” says Reuwsaat. After all, increased brain connectivity appears to underlie all three of these conditions, she says.
Yet neurodivergence tends to describe neurodevelopmental conditions, which can create functional problems in everyday life, such as inattention, emotional dysregulation or hyperactivity. That doesn’t seem to be the case for gifted children. “It is simply on the higher end in a spectrum of human intelligence,” says , a psychologist based in Australia who has published on gifted children extensively. If gifted children have social and behavioural issues, Wellisch suggests their parents get them assessed for neurodevelopmental conditions such as autism and ADHD or for mental health conditions like obsessive-compulsive disorder. Problems with behaviour “are unlikely to be a byproduct of giftedness”, she says.
Nurturing giftedness
Gifted children can, however, experience boredom or frustration in the classroom if they don’t receive enough intellectual stimulation. As such, various programmes have cropped up to ensure these children make the most of their potential – often through programmes of “academic acceleration”. Some supplement regular schooling with summer programmes. Others allow children to either skip grades or attend classes aimed at older age groups, a practice known as appropriate developmental placement.
But these initiatives have come under fire, falling out of favour in the UK and the US. For instance, last year, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani campaigned on overhauling the city’s selective programme for early grades. The UK closed its in 2010 over concerns about though private programmes are available and individual schools may offer their own initiatives.
Part of the pushback comes from worries that such programmes – and even the label “gifted” – place immense pressure on children to succeed, ultimately causing them to burn out. This idea is known as the wrecked-by-success hypothesis. While writing her book , Jennifer Crane at the University of Bristol, UK, found many accounts of children who responded badly to giftedness programmes. “Sometimes, that label can create a system of pressure,” she says.
There are also worries that the excessive focus on academic potential may come at the price of developing social skills. If a child skips a grade, for instance, they will spend less time socialising with their peers.
But the emerging science paints a different picture. While few trials have directly tested the long-term outcomes of gifted programmes, those available suggest they can nurture greater achievement without sacrificing wellbeing.
For instance, in a , Lubinski and his colleagues evaluated psychological wellbeing in more than 1600 mathematically precocious individuals at age 50. They found that the amount of educational acceleration the participants received during adolescence had no bearing on their wellbeing in adulthood. In fact, gifted individuals tended to have greater wellbeing than non-gifted individuals, regardless of academic acceleration, contradicting the idea that they are somehow emotionally or socially disadvantaged.
Perhaps the best arguments come from the participants themselves. In 2025, Lubinski and his colleagues published with gifted participants aged around 50. When reflecting on their educational experiences, around half reported experiencing boredom and frustration in mixed-ability classes. “Most of my classes were not with others of the same intellectual ability and I not only felt unchallenged, but also somewhat embarrassed by my high intellectual abilities,” one wrote. “I’m extremely fortunate that I was allowed to move rapidly in math to take college courses and to teach,” wrote another. “Not only did it help advance my education, but it gave me self-confidence socially.”
Gifted programmes also foster greater academic success. In 2015, for instance, , now at the educational company McGraw Hill in Texas, identified around 100 US students who had been academically accelerated and matched them with students who had shown similar potential, yet didn’t receive the same opportunities. Controlling for age, gender and socioeconomic background, she found that in high school and university, with higher grades and better scores on university admission exams and scholarship tests.
Lubinski and his colleagues have found similar results in their . In a 2013 study, they compared more than 360 of these students who had skipped grades with roughly 650 who didn’t. Whereas 27 per cent of grade-skippers later achieved a PhD, the same was true of just 15 per cent of those who stuck to the standard track. Similarly, nearly 13 per cent of those who skipped grades had published a scientific paper and almost 5 per cent had earned a patent, compared with roughly 6 per cent and 2 per cent, respectively, of those who hadn’t been accelerated.
Given these efforts can benefit advanced learners, a failure to meet those children’s requirements by withdrawing the support could itself be seen as unfair. Lubinski even goes as far as to compare it to a form of prejudice. “We are stereotyping students’ learning readiness by their chronological age,” he says. “If you look at 9-year-olds’ [literacy], the top 10 per cent are reading at or above the 25th percentile of 17-year-olds. It’s the same with mathematics. And these kids will have different needs.”
Despite their exceptional talent, identifying gifted children is challenging, especially when accounting for differences in socioeconomic backgrounds. Even though genetics play a large role in intellectual development, family circumstances heavily influence performance on traditional intelligence tests, particularly in early childhood. Children growing up in working-class families tend to develop a smaller vocabulary in their first years, for instance, which may increase the likelihood that teachers or psychologists ignore their learning potential.
executive director at Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth in Maryland, is leading efforts to identify advanced learners from underrepresented backgrounds. Her team is exploring three different options. The first tests fundamental cognitive skills involved in learning, such as the size of working memory – the amount of information our minds can consciously hold at any moment. The second analyses how children solve complex problems. “Can we see unique insights? Can we see deep thinking?” says Shelton. Finally, there is “embedded assessment of learning” – watching the ways children interact with new classroom material.
“We’re in the preliminary stages,” Shelton admits. But early results suggest these methods can help identify a broader range of advanced learners, without changing the number of upper-to-middle-class kids spotted for their potential.
The keys to success
While our understanding of giftedness and how to best spot it is improving, we know that intelligence isn’t the sole guarantor of success. After all, many extraordinary achievers – including Nobel prize-winners like – didn’t qualify as gifted. And many people who do fail to make an impact in their chosen careers.
This highlights an essential caveat: truly exceptional achievement depends on many factors besides intelligence. In fact, many psychologists consider two – conscientiousness and emotional stability – equally as important as IQ for shaping our performance in academia and beyond. While IQ speaks to the question of whether someone can do something, conscientiousness relates to whether someone will do it and emotional stability reflects how well someone performs under pressure. “When all three are high, the conditions for sustained success are especially strong,” says psychologist at the University of Western Australia.
Yet, according to his research, . “Someone who is even somewhat above average in intelligence, conscientiousness and emotional stability at the same time is, in fact, pretty remarkable,” says Gignac. Cultivating traits like conscientiousness and emotional regulation will, therefore, be valuable to any child’s upbringing, including those identified for their intellectual precocity.
We can also hone these attributes in adulthood. A found that simply practising aspects of conscientiousness and emotional stability for three months could lead to lasting improvements in both measures. If someone wants to become more conscientious, for example, they could commit to laying out their clothes for the next day the night before or writing down all the important birthdays for the year ahead. Likewise, keeping a gratitude journal or noting the positives in a negative situation seem to boost emotional stability. In other words, faking it till you make it really does work – at least to a degree.
“A normally functioning person may be able to shift their standing on a personality dimension by, perhaps, 10 per cent through sustained effort,” says Gignac. “But such changes likely require ongoing maintenance.” It may be easier, then, to change your environment instead of your personality, he says. If you are seeking greater emotional stability, for example, this may mean spending less time in high-conflict environments.
For those marked as gifted, the path to becoming the next global superstar or founder of one of the world’s most successful tech companies isn’t guaranteed. But by understanding more about what helps gifted people thrive in adulthood, perhaps we can unlock more of their lifelong potential.
Additional reporting by Grace Wade.
