Early giftedness rarely lasts into adulthood, large developmental study finds

Children identified as highly intelligent at an early age rarely maintain their high cognitive scores by the time they reach adulthood. A large study of child development suggests that early gifted programs may be relying on unstable measures, as cognitive ability shifts dramatically before stabilizing in adolescence. The research was published in the journal Intelligence & Cognitive Abilities.

General cognitive ability represents a broad measure of how well a person acquires knowledge, solves problems, and processes information. This trait is typically assessed using standardized intelligence tests that yield a cumulative score spanning verbal and non-verbal skills. Psychologists have debated how early in life this trait becomes a permanent fixture of an individual’s psychological profile.

High scores on early childhood intelligence tests frequently lead to placements in specialized gifted programs. Educational systems often assume that a child who demonstrates advanced reasoning skills at age four or seven will maintain that same intellectual advantage into adulthood. Researchers wanted to test the reality of this assumption by mapping out the actual cognitive trajectories of thousands of developing children.

The study was led by Angel Blanch, a psychologist at the Universitat de Lleida in Spain. Blanch collaborated with Sergio Escorial at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid and Roberto Colom at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. The research team sought to identify what specific personal and situational factors predict whether a child will keep or lose a high cognitive score over time.

To answer this, the researchers analyzed data from the Twins Early Development Study. This cohort includes detailed longitudinal data on child development spanning thousands of families in the United Kingdom. The researchers focused on a large sample of 11,119 participants who had their cognitive abilities tested repeatedly at ages four, seven, twelve, sixteen, and twenty-one.

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The cognitive assessments changed as the participants matured to capture age-appropriate skills. Early testing involved parent-administered vocabulary and grammar scales alongside non-verbal puzzles. By age twenty-one, the participants were completing complex web-based gamified tests measuring advanced verbal reasoning and matrix-based problem-solving.

The participants were divided into two main groups based on their test scores at age seven. The normative group consisted of 3,958 individuals who scored in the average range, between 99 and 115 points. The high-ability group included 1,580 individuals who scored above 115 points on the standardized assessments.

The research team used statistical tools called latent curve models to track how each participant’s scores changed as they aged. This method allowed the scientists to map average starting points and the rate of change over a period of fourteen years. They then introduced several predictive variables into the models to see what related to these cognitive shifts.

These predictive variables included a mix of biological and environmental factors. On the biological side, the team looked at polygenic scores, which estimate an individual’s genetic likelihood for a certain trait based on variations across their entire genome. Environmental factors included the socioeconomic status of the parents, home chaos, behavioral problems, school engagement, and stressful life events.

The data revealed a high degree of cognitive mobility among the children. Only 16 percent of the participants who scored in the high-ability tier at age seven maintained that high status by age sixteen. The vast majority of early high-scorers saw their cognitive scores drift downward toward the average range as they matured.

Cognitive stability increased as the children reached early adolescence. Of the participants who showed high cognitive ability at age twelve, about 23 percent kept their high scores into their late teens. A similar stability rate was observed for those scoring high at age sixteen, indicating that age twelve might be a more reliable time for identifying sustained intellectual advancement.

Upward mobility was also relatively rare for the children who started with average scores. Among the normative group at age seven, only 8 percent experienced enough cognitive growth to cross into the high-ability tier by age sixteen. It was statistically three times more likely for a high-ability child to maintain their rank than it was for an average-ability child to climb into the top tier.

When examining predictors of these shifts, the researchers found that genetic and personal factors showed stronger associations than situational metrics. Higher polygenic scores and parental socioeconomic status were robustly associated with maintaining higher cognitive scores and experiencing positive developmental trajectories. In contrast, environmental variables like a chaotic home life or early behavioral problems had very little association with the rate of cognitive change.

This insulation from environmental factors was particularly pronounced in the high-ability group. These individuals were largely unaffected by negative life events or a disorganized home environment when it came to their long-term intellectual growth. For the average-scoring group, stressful life events did show a mild negative association with cognitive scores at older ages, though the impact was secondary to genetic predictors.

School engagement was one of the few situational variables that positively predicted cognitive growth across both groups. Adolescents who reported higher engagement with their schoolwork and teachers tended to experience greater upward shifts in their cognitive scores. Even so, the biological markers remained the strongest overall predictors of intellectual development.

These findings align with a developmental concept known as the Wilson effect, which describes how the heritability of intelligence increases as people age. Children’s brains dynamically mature according to intrinsic genetic programs that express themselves differently across various developmental stages. As individuals grow older, they naturally gravitate toward the intellectual levels predicted by their genomes, overriding many early environmental advantages or disadvantages.

The strong association between socioeconomic status and cognitive maintenance comes with a biological caveat. Socioeconomic status in this study was based on the educational and occupational credentials of the parents. Because parents pass down both their genes and their social standing, separating the purely environmental impact of wealth from inherited cognitive traits remains a persistent challenge in developmental psychology.

The study relied entirely on behavioral tests and questionnaires rather than direct physical measurements. The researchers did not collect brain imaging data, preventing them from observing the physical cortical changes that accompany these cognitive shifts. Identifying specific neural markers could help explain why some children lose their early cognitive advantages while others retain them.

The statistical models required participants to have consistent data points across multiple ages, which limited the types of variables the team could include. Certain developmental milestones might have been missed between the specific testing ages of seven, twelve, sixteen, and twenty-one. Future studies tracking these cognitive transitions on a year-by-year basis could provide a more detailed map of intellectual maturation.

The results suggest that educational systems should exercise caution when relying on cognitive assessments administered in early childhood. Placing young children into rigid educational tracks based on preschool or early elementary testing often results in misclassification. Regular re-evaluation throughout adolescence presents a much more accurate picture of a student’s long-term intellectual potential.

The study, “Developmental changes in high cognitive ability children: The role of nature and nurture,” was authored by Angel Blanch, Sergio Escorial, and Roberto Colom.