A child prodigy is someone who, at an early age, develops one or more skills at a level far beyond the norm for their age. A prodigy has to be a child, or at least younger than 18 years, who is performing at the level of a highly trained adult in a very demanding field of endeavour.
The giftedness of prodigies is determined by the degree of their talent relative to their ages. Examples of particularly extreme prodigies could include Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in music, Magnus Carlsen, Sergey Karjakin, and Judit Polgár in chess, Carl Friedrich Gauss, Srinivasa Ramanujan, John von Neumann, and Terence Tao in mathematics, Pablo Picasso and Wang Ximeng in art, and Saul Kripke in philosophy. There is controversy as to at what age and standard to use in the definition of a prodigy.
The term Wunderkind (from German: "wonder child") is sometimes used as a synonym for prodigy, particularly in media accounts, although this term is discouraged in scientific literature. Wunderkind also is used to recognize those who achieve success and acclaim early in their adult careers.
Read more about Child Prodigy: Memory Capacity of Prodigies, Working Memory/Cerebellum Theory of Child Prodigies, Nature Versus Nurture in The Development of The Prodigy
Famous quotes containing the word child:
“Play for young children is not recreation activity,... It is not leisure-time activity nor escape activity.... Play is thinking time for young children. It is language time. Problem-solving time. It is memory time, planning time, investigating time. It is organization-of-ideas time, when the young child uses his mind and body and his social skills and all his powers in response to the stimuli he has met.”
—James L. Hymes, Jr. (20th century)