Talk:Late talker

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 15 August 2019 and 16 December 2019. Further details are available on the course page. Peer reviewers: Scvaccarelli.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 23:57, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

New Idea
Could we change the name of the article title to 'Late Talkers' or 'Late Talking' and just keep Einstein Syndrome as a sub-heading or something within the article? In current research articles, that is the term being used, I don't think many people know to look up einstein syndrome but will recognize a title about late talking. If this is okay, does anyone know how to change the article title? — Preceding unsigned comment added by RachelPiles (talk • contribs) 15:06, 10 May 2017 (UTC)

This article, in totality, may be an easier read if the information was broken up into subsections.

The first paragraph is a lot of information. The subsections could include, but not limited to: signs + symptoms, effects, causes, etc... — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mjmarcan (talk • contribs) 11:57, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

Older attempt
An earlier attempt at a Wikipedia article on Einstein Syndrome mentioned that Richard Feynman, G. Gordon Liddy, Benito Mussolini, Srinivasa Ramanujan, Julia Robinson, Arthur Rubinstein, Clara Schumann and Edward Teller had all been retrospectively diagnosed as sufferers – in addition of course to Albert Einstein, after whom it is named. An archived debate about that article’s proposed deletion may be found here. Below is an excerpt from its talk page.

alderbourne (talk) 02:38, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

Other Late-Talkers of Note
Other famous late-talkers are mentioned in Sowell's book The Einstein Syndrome: Bright Children Who Talk Late (2001). Not mentioned by Sowell are Alessandro Volta, Sir Anthony Hopkins and Eric Bond Hutton, all of whom also fit the description of somebody with this syndrome.

Jake Rilko 19:19, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

I have just been reading about Charles I (of Great Britain and Ireland), who did not learn to talk till he was about five years old. According to Charles Carlton's Charles I: The Personal Monarch (2nd edition, 1995):


 * one observer remembered he was "very wilful, somewhat inclining to perverseness of disposition", while another recalled that, "If anyone crossed him he would hardly be stilled, crawling about on all fours in a most unseemly manner."*

That, I should add, was when he was a child. Yet that stubborn streak was evident throughout his life, and is characteristic of what Thomas Sowell has chosen to call Einstein Syndrome.

* Page 4.

Jake Rilko 19:54, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

It seems that Edison, too, was a late-talker. According to an online biographical sketch by one Gerald Beals (at www.thomasedison.com/biog.htm), he


 * did not learn to talk until he was almost four years of age. Immediately thereafter, he began pleading with every adult he met to explain the workings of just about everything he encountered. If they said they didn't know, he would look them straight in the eye with his deeply set and vibrant blue-green eyes and ask them "Why?"


 * [...]


 * At age seven — after spending 12 weeks in a noisy one-room schoolhouse with 38 other students of all ages — Tom's overworked and short[-]tempered teacher finally lost his patience with the child's persistent questioning and seemingly self[-]centered behavior. Noting that Tom's forehead was unusually broad and his head was considerably larger than average, he made no secret of his belief that the hyperactive youngster's brains were "addled" or scrambled.


 * If modern psychology had existed back then, Tom would have probably been deemed a victim of ADHD (attention[-]deficit hyperactivity disorder) and proscribed [sic] a hefty dose of the "miracle drug" Ritalin.

All of which will sound very familiar to anybody who has read The Einstein Syndrome, including the comment about Ritalin, unfortunately.

Jake Rilko 18:01, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Here's another one for the list. Douglas Adams, according to Neil Gaiman's foreword to The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2002), "was a self-described 'strange child' who did not learn to speak until he was four". No doubt if he were alive today and of school age he would be labelled autistic.

alderbourne 13:50, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

Ludwig Wittgenstein "did not speak until well after his fourth birthday", according to Christopher Gillberg's book A Guide to Asperger Syndrome (2002).* Having made a detailed study of the philosopher's life, Gillberg believes he "may indeed have had Asperger syndrome".† Yet I cannot help thinking that many of the reasons given for this diagnosis — among them Wittgenstein's being "in constant opposition to other people even before adolescence", finding "it very difficult to relate to others" and feeling "wounded" by the crudeness of the working classes‡ — might be better explained in terms of his vastly superior IQ. His late-talking, furthermore, would seem to rule out a diagnosis of Asperger Syndrome, sufferers from which do not experience any significant delay in speech development. It could, however, be explained in terms of the atypical brain anatomy that lies at the heart of so-called Einstein Syndrome. As Thomas Sowell says in his book on the subject:


 * Neuroscientists who have noted that Einstein's brain was extraordinarily developed in a region associated with mathematical and spatial reasoning have also noted that there are "adjacent areas involved in language," which seem to have gotten less than their usual development in his brain. What is not known is whether that is why he talked late. The facts, however, are sufficiently striking to have caused some neuroscientists to suggest the possibility of a connection. [...]


 * [...]


 * Since the entire brain grows in early childhood [...] this hypothesis is consistent with the fact that bright, late-talking children do eventually begin to speak and that their speech development usually catches up with that of other children in a few years.§

Such atypical brain anatomy is believed to be congenital, and almost certainly has a genetic cause. Nothing comparable is associated with autism or Asperger Syndrome.

* Page 129.

† Ibid.

‡ All quotations ibid.

§ The Einstein Syndrome: Bright Children Who Talk Late (2001), pp. 93–94.

alderbourne 22:28, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Yet another. The Many Lives of Roald Dahl, broadcast on BBC Radio 4 today, 23 May 2009, included an excerpt from an interview in which Dahl talked about his childhood:


 * I was a bit backward. I didn't speak one word until I was two. And just before my mother was going to take me to the doctor to see what kind of brain damage I had, my father came into the nursery and out came a whole sentence in Norwegian [his first language], which was, "Father, you've forgotten to put your bedroom slippers on."

alderbourne (talk) 22:21, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Here is the composer Antony Hopkins in his autobiography:


 * I didn't walk until I was two and, perhaps more disturbingly, spoke not a word until I was three. Curiously enough my mother was not unduly worried by this, despite suggestions that my brain might have been damaged through a persistent lack of nourishment. She remained quietly confident that in due course I would be able to speak, a confidence that was shown to be justified when, in a beach-hut at Whitstable, the assembled family became aware of a large and aggressive insect. Following its erratic flight with my eyes I suddenly enunciated the single word "bumble-bee" with perfect clarity. This spectacular verbal début elicited some enthusiastic applause which presumably must have gone to my head since I have hardly stopped talking since. By the time I was four I had become positively garrulous [...].*

He should not of course be confused with the actor (and occasional composer) Sir Anthony Hopkins, mentioned above.

* Beating Time (2nd edition, 1983), p. 14.

alderbourne (talk) 12:10, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Unregistered User 68.255.255.7
I see that you have added Lewis Carroll and Nikola Tesla to the list of famous late-talkers, in addition to rearranging the list according to some peculiar logic of your own. Unfortunately, I am unable to contact you directly or to leave a message on a user talk page since you are not yet a registered user.

I have an interest in both Carroll and Tesla, yet cannot recall ever reading that either was a late-talker. Are you sure of your facts? Can you cite sources? I would be most interested to know.

I have reverted the article to the edit immediately prior to yours.

alderbourne 12:55, 25 June 2007 (UTC)


 * I didn't talk till I was 3 ;). My daughter didn't talk until she was 2 1/2. She pointed at the tiles on the ceiling in the asian restaurant we were at and said dragon. Nicholasjh1 (talk) 15:58, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

ES not a recognised condition
There's no point keeping this article in your sandbox I'm afraid. This condition has no recognition whatsoever in mainstream medicine and never will because all the symptoms were covered in the DSM-5 under Autistic spectrum. Cowell work will simply sink without trace as only Darold Treffert has supported him and that's nowhere near enough. It'll disappear just like Maxine Aston's Cassandra Syndrome has. It has no medical value. 203.15.226.132 (talk) 04:31, 12 February 2016 (UTC)

Article from biomedical journal not reliable?
The IP who added this statement needs to explain why the reference I added here  isn't a reliable source. This review article appears in a peer-reviewed medical journal whose chief editor is Fred Volkmar, a leading expert on autism. CatPath (talk) 02:03, 10 March 2016 (UTC)

I can answer that. The source you added describes Savant Syndrome and simply mentions Einstein Syndrome in passing. It's not a source that speaks in any detail about ES. So I've re-added the statement that was removed and it should stay until a specific journal entry recognises it in detail - which until now it hasn't. 101.182.75.183 (talk) 02:46, 19 May 2016 (UTC)
 * the negative statement is WP:OR and cannot stay. Jytdog (talk) 04:46, 19 May 2016 (UTC)
 * How can the absence of evidence be OR? 101.182.75.183 (talk) 05:02, 19 May 2016 (UTC)
 * You looked for evidence. You found none.  You recorded that in Wikipedia.  That is the definition of WP:OR.  Find a reliable source that says this and cite it, if you want to include this content. Jytdog (talk) 05:05, 19 May 2016 (UTC)
 * HOW CAN YOU PROVE A NEGATIVE??? For crying out loud, do you have a COI here? Threatening to IP block the page doesn't help your case. 101.182.75.183 (talk) 05:13, 19 May 2016 (UTC)
 * The only way you (you) could come to that negative conclusion is because you looked and found nothing. You cannot record that work in Wikipedia.  If somebody else has found none and has said that in a reliable source, you can cite that source.  but you cannot add that statement under your own authority.  You need a source per WP:VERIFY.  This is not complicated.  Jytdog (talk) 05:34, 19 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Again - how can you prove something that doesn't exist? If that's what the rules says it needs to be changed because it's wrong. It's preventing legitimate notes like what I tried to restore. It's not up to me to verify something doesn't exist. It's up to others to verify that it does! It's like telling someone to prove there isn't a cloud in the sky on a clear day. We can all see there isn't any! For your information I didn't search for anything - so the same thing applies. 101.182.75.183 (talk) 06:21, 19 May 2016 (UTC)

Edited that Ramanujan was a mathematician
I edited and showed that Ramanujan was a mathematician and also showed that Feynman was a physicist. Uddhav9 (talk) 10:39, 2 July 2018 (UTC)

Hi Wikipedia editors and users! I feel like this article can be vastly improved if some information is removed and if other information is expanded and made clearer. First I plan to edit the definition so that it does not seem biased, as it uses the words “exceptionally bright” to describe late talkers. I want to make the definition more formal and unbiased.

Instead of listing the commonalities, I would like to change it to “Late talkers at 24 months of age are associated with being male, having a lower socioeconomic status, being a nonsingleton, older maternal age at birth, moderately low birth weight, lower quality parenting, attention problems”.

Also, I would like to expand upon how late talkers can be distinguished from having other delayed language disorders like autism spectrum disorder. I will be using information from this source to provide more information about the differences.

I would also like to remove the last paragraph that talks about late talkers being “highly intelligent” because the various sources I looked at did not provide enough support/evidence for those claims.Jmartinezhernandez (talk) 01:38, 8 November 2019 (UTC)

Improving "Late Talker"
Hi Wikipedia editors and users! I feel like this article can be vastly improved if some information is removed and if other information is expanded and made clearer. First I plan to edit the definition so that it does not seem biased, as it uses the words “exceptionally bright” to describe late talkers. I want to make the definition more formal and unbiased.

Instead of listing the commonalities, I would like to change it to “Late talkers at 24 months of age are associated with being male, having a lower socioeconomic status, being a nonsingleton, older maternal age at birth, moderately low birth weight, lower quality parenting, attention problems”.

Also, I would like to expand upon how late talkers can be distinguished from having other delayed language disorders like autism spectrum disorder. I will be using information from this source to provide more information about the differences.

I would also like to remove the last paragraph that talks about late talkers being “highly intelligent” because the various sources I looked at did not provide enough support/evidence for those claims.Jmartinezhernandez (talk) 01:41, 8 November 2019 (UTC)

Adult-Slow-Learners ?
I am wondering whether in emphasising 'late-talking', a condition of childhood development, we may be missing a much more profound difference in the way human beings learn. What if the way knowledge is stored in the human brain (aka neural-net) is , extremely varied, so that for some it is akin to just dumping stuff in a flat directory structure; whilst for others it is akin to being placed in a multi-dimensional  data-base ? So that while some 'adult-slow-learners' may actually be a bit dim; others may simply be unable to learn until a large amount of context,internal inconsistency, ambiguity is sorted ?

We might expect to discriminate between the two because the second will be asking; many more questions than the first. In fact the second might be asking many more, questions than is normal for ordinary 'fast learners', for whom all these questions, might seem unnecessary and/or like intellectual egotism whereas for this type of 'adult-slow-learner' it is neither but just the bare necessity of learning at all. An interesting question, if such a profound difference in the way humans learn, actually exists; is what would be the expect-able observable cognitive differences between the two groups ?

Regardless of what differences might be expected and the superior functionality in a library, of a database indexing system over a simple Dewey indexing system comes to mind; such adult slow learners in current society would have a very difficult life. As a child with 'normal 'fast learner' parents, the child will seem extremely difficult by seemingly stubbornly  resisting  learning many  normative values and behaviors. The organisation of educational curriculums, which are often 'bottom-up' ie not structured to answer the 'why am I learning this now' ? question, might not work well for such an individual. So they might abandon formal education for an auto-didactic one. So the whole life path of educational qualification, career ....etc might be unavailable to them. All this within the context that they could well have no clear understanding that they are different and how they are different,  from the majority of 'adult fast learners.

2 possible improvements
Samnaderi (talk) 15:10, 12 October 2022 (UTC)
 * 1) I don't think Einstein syndrome is a synonym for late talking, because late talkers can be not gifted and can have Intellectual disability.
 * 2) Should Einstein syndrome be mentioned somewhere in the body of this article?

Wikipedia Ambassador Program course assignment
This article is the subject of an educational assignment at St. Charles Community College supported by WikiProject Psychology and the Wikipedia Ambassador Program&#32;during the 2011 Q3 term. Further details are available on the course page.

The above message was substituted from by PrimeBOT (talk) on 17:24, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

Negative article
Most of this article is written in a very deficit-based manner. While late talkers appear to be behind in initial development, they can often become brilliant minds in later life. 31.94.69.159 (talk) 21:16, 26 December 2023 (UTC)