David Lubinski
Cornelius Vanderbilt Professor of Psychology and Human Development Vanderbilt University
- Nashville TN
An expert who co-leads the foremost longitudinal study of gifted individuals in the world.
Multimedia
Biography
Areas of Expertise
Accomplishments
AERA Pathbreaker Award
For Research on Giftedness, Creativity, and Talent
APA George A. Miller Award - Division I
Outstanding Article in General Psychology
Distinguished Scholar Award
National Association for Gifted Children
Lifetime Achievement Award
American Mensa Foundation
International Society for Intelligence Research, Lifetime Achievement Award:
For Outstanding Contributions to the Field of Intelligence
Education
University of Minnesota
Ph.D.
University of Minnesota
B.A.
Affiliations
- Member, American Educational Research Association
- Fellow, Association for Psychological Science
- Fellow, American Psychological Association
Links
Selected Media Appearances
What Happens to Gifted Children
The New York Times online
2024-06-13
Some people want to get rid of magnet high schools and accelerated programs for these kinds of precocious kids. But these programs are necessary if we’re going to keep high-scoring students engaged and growing. I spoke with David Lubinski and Camilla Benbow, who direct the S.M.P.Y. study at Vanderbilt University. They observed that we have inherited an industrial model school system that sometimes treats children as interchangeable widgets — every child is supposed to learn reading at age 6.
The Happiness Data That Wrecks a Freudian Theory
The Wall Street Journal online
2022-06-30
“We had a lot more data,” said David Lubinski, a professor of psychology at Vanderbilt University. “This was data that was not available and really unimaginable in Freud’s time.”
The source of that data was an extraordinary project called the Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth, a 50-year longitudinal survey of gifted students overseen by Dr. Lubinski and Camilla P. Benbow at Vanderbilt. Tracking the same population of talented individuals over extended periods starting in 1972, from when they were children with potential to when they had children of their own, has proven to be valuable in all sorts of unpredictable ways. These psychologists have the answers to many riveting questions about human behavior. Their job is figuring out what to ask.
Opinion | We Are Leaving ‘Lost Einsteins’ Behind
New York Times online
2021-07-21
“Current talent search procedures focus on the assessment of mathematical and verbal ability,” wrote David Lubinski of Vanderbilt and Harrison J. Kell, a senior researcher at the Educational Testing Service, in “Spatial Ability: A Neglected Talent in Educational and Occupational Settings.” Lubinski and Kell stress the failure of many of such searches to test for the cognitive skill known as spatial ability.
The great ‘gifted’ gap
USA Today print
2020-01-14
Because there’s no federal standard for identifying giftedness, states and districts come up with their own definitions – which is one reason researchers don’t have a clear answer on the benefits of gifted education. Some say highly talented children can reach their full potential only if they’re educated alongside other highachieving students.
“It’s good for kids to be with their intellectual peers,” said David Lubinski, a psychology professor at Vanderbilt University and a longtime expert on gifted education.
Will Bright Kids Succeed Even if Not Challenged Enough?
Psychology Today online
2019-07-18
Gifted individuals, overall, end up as psychologically well-adjusted. A century of research on gifted kids shows that these kids end up academically and occupationally successful, as indicated by the Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth led by Camilla Benbow and David Lubinski.
Of Furries and Fascism at Google
Wall Street Journal online
2018-01-16
Mr. Damore’s firing last year by CEO Sundar Pichai certainly rang of panic at the time. Google explicitly invites freewheeling discussion and provides internal forums for it. Mr. Damore did not, in his famous memo, object to Google’s diversity goals. His ruminations on biology may be jejune, but unwelcome facts are still facts. Witness the work of David Lubinski at Vanderbilt, which goes a long way toward explaining the recruiting frustrations of many a tech and engineering-based company. Prof. Lubinski and colleagues find that women who are gifted in math and science tend to be broadly gifted, and consequently have lots of opportunities in a wide range of fields, whereas men with math talents tend to be narrowly gifted, and all end up in math-science-engineering fields.
Psychologists studied 5,000 genius kids for 45 years — a short film reveals its key findings
Insider online
2017-09-18
A new short film from Vanderbilt University, where SMPY is run by researchers Camilla Benbow and David Lubinski, reveals some of the biggest takeaways since the study began issuing exams to teens across five cohorts over the years.
Selected Articles
From Terman to today: A century of findings on intellectual precocity
Review of Educational ResearchDavid Lubinski
2016
One hundred years of research (1916–2016) on intellectually precocious youth is reviewed, painting a portrait of an extraordinary source of human capital and the kinds of learning opportunities needed to facilitate exceptional accomplishments, life satisfaction, and positive growth.
Fine mapping genetic associations between the HLA region and extremely high intelligence
Scientific ReportsDelilah Zabaneh, Eva Krapohl, Michael A Simpson, Mike B Miller, William G Iacono, Matt McGue, Martha Putallaz, David Lubinski, Robert Plomin, Gerome Breen
2017
General cognitive ability (intelligence) is one of the most heritable behavioural traits and most predictive of socially important outcomes and health. We hypothesized that some of the missing heritability of IQ might lie hidden in the human leukocyte antigen (HLA) region, which plays a critical role in many diseases and traits but is not well tagged in conventional GWAS. Using a uniquely powered design, we investigated whether fine-mapping of the HLA region could narrow the missing heritability gap.
Who shines most among the brightest?: A 25-year longitudinal study of elite STEM graduate students.
Journal of Personality and Social PsychologyKira O McCabe, David Lubinski, Camilla P Benbow
2019
In 1992, the Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth (SMPY) surveyed 714 first- and second-year graduate students (48.5% female) attending U.S. universities ranked in the top-15 by science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) field. This study investigated whether individual differences assessed early in their graduate school career were associated with becoming a STEM leader 25 years later (e.g., STEM full professors at research-intensive universities, STEM CEOs, and STEM leaders in government) versus not becoming a STEM leader.
A genome-wide association study for extremely high intelligence
Molecular PsychiatryD Zabaneh, E Krapohl, HA Gaspar, C Curtis, SH Lee, H Patel, S Newhouse, HM Wu, MA Simpson, M Putallaz, D Lubinski, R Plomin, G Breen
2019
We used a case–control genome-wide association (GWA) design with cases consisting of 1238 individuals from the top 0.0003 (~170 mean IQ) of the population distribution of intelligence and 8172 unselected population-based controls. The single-nucleotide polymorphism heritability for the extreme IQ trait was 0.33 (0.02), which is the highest so far for a cognitive phenotype, and significant genome-wide genetic correlations of 0.78 were observed with educational attainment and 0.86 with population IQ.
Psychological constellations assessed at age 13 predict distinct forms of eminence 35 years later
Psychological ScienceBrian O Bernstein, David Lubinski, Camilla P Benbow
2019
This investigation examined whether math/scientific and verbal/humanistic ability and preference constellations, developed on intellectually talented 13-year-olds to predict their educational outcomes at age 23, continue to maintain their longitudinal potency by distinguishing distinct forms of eminence 35 years later.
