Gifted babies do things sooner—that’s how early it shows up. Gifted children can learn to walk sooner, talk sooner, climb sooner, have rational thoughts sooner, etc. I’m not talking about marginally sooner. I’m talking about huge gaps like 1⁄3 sooner or 3 times sooner, and sometimes even 12 times sooner (William Sidis).
Einstein and Feynman didn’t start to talk until they were 3.
Einstein and Feynman didn’t start to talk until they were 3.
Huh. I didn’t know that. My parents thought I was deaf until one day I started talking—in full and coherent sentences.
How common is that?
This old Language Log post discusses some fictional, real and apocryphal cases.
I had originally read that on the WIkipedia article about Feynman, which links to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_delay, which cites http://pinker.wjh.harvard.edu/articles/media/1999_06_24_newyorktimes.html (which I haven’t read yet, but I’m going to).
I couldn’t give a figure for it but it is a common enough occurrence that my Asperger’s Syndrome textbook notes it as a possible outcome.