This is totally me. My verbal ability is much stronger than mathematical ability, it’s not even close. I used to think I should really work to be better at my math, but, why fight something that’s not meant to be so? Instead, I’m working on making my natural gift even better: become an unstoppable writer and speaker. And surround myself with people who can do 2 + 2.
Link: Eide Neurolearning Blog: Well-Rounded vs. Lop-Sided Learners.
Adults with high IQs show lower correlations among subtests of the IQ than do those with ordinary IQs (Detterman & Daniel, 1989). Consistent with this, the cognitive profiles of academically gifted children are often quite uneven, with mathematical ability far outstripping verbal ability, or the reverse (Benbow & Minor, 1990). Research is needed to determine how common such uneven profiles among the gifted are, and how common it is to have gifts accompanied by absolute rather than relative weaknesses.
There often seems to be balancing act between certain systems – like words and pictures or words and music. Sometimes people seem very balanced at both, but the question is whether among people with extreme abilities – lop-sidedness or balance is more often the norm.
One of the links below is from a paper which looked at hemispheric lateralization (right brain – left brain) and cooperation during a challenging visual categorization task. The one pattern that made mathematically gifted adolescents stand out from age-matched peers or college students, was that they were better at hemispheric cooperation. So at least for these gifted math students, their more striking difference from age peers or college students was that they were more super right + left brain , rather than super-right or =left.