Check out this interesting article about child prodigies:
Are Prodigies Autistic?
They didn’t necessarily have extraordinary IQ scores:
Looking at all eight children together, the researchers found some striking patterns. The first thing they noticed is the wide spread of IQ scores- ranging from 108 to 147. Consistent with the work of Feldman and Morelock, it appears that a high IQ is not necessary to be a prodigy. More telling, however, were the subtest scores. All of the prodigies showed uneven cognitive profiles. In fact, one prodigy obtained a total IQ score of 108 and a visual spatial IQ score of 71, which is worse than 97 percent of the general population.
but they had amazing working memory abilities:
More striking is that every single prodigy scored off the charts in working memory -- better than 99 percent of the general population. In fact, six out of the eight prodigies scored at the 99.9th percentile! Working memory isn't solely the ability to memorize a string of digits. That's short-term memory. Instead, working memory involves the ability to hold information in memory while being able to manipulate and process other incoming information.
and even more interesting:
According to Ericsson and Kintsch, experts acquire their superior memory skills by gradually building up an elaborate, well-connected database of knowledge in long-term memory that is always on call. Experts then quickly link the current contents of short-term memory to this database, making the short-term memories more vivid and meaningful. Deeper memory encoding makes it much easier to access memories when they are cued at a later time. The proof in the pudding is that people can be trained to increase their memories dramatically for seemingly random bits of information by making the information meaningful. Most memory champions have spent years deliberately practicing techniques such as the method of loci to increase their memories for random strings of digits, numbers, faces, and even decks of cards.
It also says that a few, but not all, of the prodigies had been diagnosed with autism and as a group had higher levels of autistic traits. (Example: “attention to detail”)
See also:
http://psycnet.apa.org/psycinfo/1995-24067-001
The most interesting part for me is how deep knowledge of a subject (and memory techniques) might improve working memory.
What do you think?