Science: Terman’s Kids

For decades the problems of human personality have puckered the benign and seamy face of Lewis Madison Terman. Dr. Terman, professor of psychology at Stanford University, has spent much time studying the personality factors that make for happy or unhappy marriages (TIME, June 24, 1935; Oct. 17, 1938). Another of his great interests is child prodigies. In Science last week Dr. Terman reported what happens to child prodigies when they grow up, get jobs, get married.

Before 1850, a gifted child was regarded with “a mixture of admiration, awe and hopeful expectation.” But in the latter 19th Century the idea spread that the “precocious” child was somehow abnormal, probably headed for failure, neuroticism or insanity. If a child was phenomenally good at one thing it was assumed that he lacked other faculties. Heavy-duty thinkers wrote treatises to prove that a child’s mental ability should develop at the orthodox rate if he was to have a well-rounded maturity. These nonsensical ideas, says Dr. Terman, have abated somewhat but have by no means vanished.

In 1922 Terman picked out, on the basis of I. Q. tests, some 1,300 gifted youngsters from about a quarter of a million California school children. Thus each child selected was the pick of about one in 190. Dr. Terman’s requirement was an I. Q. of 140 or more (average for the chosen children was around 150). Dr. Terman was not interested in objections to the I. Q. as a measure of real intelligence —whether the I. Q. is an accurate measure or not, it gave him something to go on.

The group included more than 1,000 grade-school pupils, averaging nine or ten years, and more than 250 high-school students, with a median age of 15. Jews ranked easily best, followed by children of old U. S. stock originally from New England or the Middle West.

Immediately the investigator blew up three fallacies: 1) that smart children tend to be frail; 2) that girls are smarter than boys; 3) that smart children are “onesided.” Medical and anthropometric tests showed that Terman’s group was healthier, and, in general, physiologically superior to the average. In the grade-school section the ratio of bright boys to bright girls was 6-to-5, in the high-school section 2-to-1. As a group the bright kids showed versatility in information and school activity.

The boys & girls grew older, now range from 22 to 37, with the average over 30. “Terman’s Kids” are famed, among psychologists, the world over: for Terman and his field workers have kept tabs on them, issued progress reports from time to time.

Average earned income of the men at age 30 is around $3,000. This is good for an average, and it would be even higher if many of the men were not teachers in universities, just getting their careers underway. About a dozen men make $10,000 to $15,000. One of these is a staff artist for Cinemanimator Walt Disney—salary, $12,000. The group includes a physical scientist and a physiologist who are university department heads; a 32-year-old aeronautical engineer who is coordinator of research in a $10,000,000 laboratory; also jazz-band players, ghost writers, radio announcers, a fox farmer, a rare-stamp dealer, a cop. Half of Terman’s boys entered professions, with the law leading. They have written dozens of books, hundreds of short stories, poems, articles. They have taken out more than 80 patents.

Depression hit the group hard, but all, at latest report, had managed to stay off relief. About two-thirds married, and the divorce rate is less than the general. The mortality rate is also less than the general, the suicide rate slightly less, the percentage of confinement in mental hospitals also less.

The conclusion, as plain as the wrinkles on Dr. Terman’s face: children with high I. Q.s get along better than average in later life.