[Beck:] All right. You don`t have to be a genius to host a TV show, and I`m living proof of that, but you do have to be a genius to become a member of Mensa. The high I.Q. society just welcomed their newest member I don`t know if you saw this story over the weekend a 2-year-old little girl from England with an I.Q. of 152. She can count to ten, draw on almost perfect circle and tell the difference between pink and purple. I can do all of those things. At 2, she`s already overqualified to work in my position. Joining me now if Frank Lawless. He is a psychologist in charge of testing for Mensa. How are you doing, Frank?
[Frank Lawless, Psychologist:] How are you doing? I`m doing fine.
[Beck:] Well, yes. What is your I.Q., Frank?
[Lawless:] Well, it varies, depending on what test I take. It will range from, you know, really high to, you know, real high.
[Beck:] That`s weird. Mine too. So she has 152 I.Q. The parents said she they think she could have scored higher, but she had to take a nap, in the middle of the test. How off the charts is this girl?
[Lawless:] Well, first of all, the Stanford-Binet that she was tested by, it`s a little bit it has a higher ceiling effect, so that particular score would probably be lower if they took a statistical kind of I.Q. test. So we`re really talking about 140. This is really high. I don`t want to detract from that, but it is really very high, and, you know, noteworthy in terms of being higher than probably 99 percent of the population.
[Beck:] The people people I heard people talking about this. Like, she drew a circle. How tough is drawing a circle?
[Lawless:] Yes. Well, again, let me explain what I.Q. is. It`s basically your mental age compared to your chronological age. So she`s 2 years old, and it takes a 3-year-old or a 4-year-old to draw a perfect circle. So, if you compared just that test, then she`s 4 over 2, which would make her have an I.Q. of 200. So it`s very relative to, you know, the age itself.
[Beck:] Well, he was giving that answer, I just drew a cube right there. That`s much more complex than a circle. She`s compared to Stephen Hawking, which I love, because Stephen Hawking, he did nothing with his intelligence until he got until he fell down the stairs when he was at Cambridge as a student and realized, "Uh-oh, I`ve got something bad going on." And then he was given a very short period of time to live and decided to apply himself. Just because she`s a genius doesn`t mean that she`s going to amount to anything. I`m trying to make myself feel better about me and my kids and my whole family for generations, quite honestly.
[Lawless:] Well, she scored high on an I.Q. test for 2-year-olds. That doesn`t mean that she scored high for a test for adults.
[Beck:] Oh, so she could stop at any time?
[Lawless:] She could stop at any time.
[Beck:] This may be as good as it gets for her?
[Lawless:] Well, it might be, but what happens is that 50 percent has to do with her gray matter. Fifty percent has to do with what happens along the way. We can destroy a lot of brain cells just by taking too much alcohol, staying up too late, not getting enough sleep and being angry or stressed. All those things will detract or subtract from your
[I.q. Beck:] That`s why mine is only 160, quite honestly. Or I know it`s got a 60 in it. You the somebody who tested like this or would have tested like this is Einstein, right? They thought he was they thought he was a dummy when he was a kid.
[Lawless:] Well, exactly. And that`s what I was going to say about the term genius. Genius really can`t be calculated. There`s not a test for genius. There`s a test for high intelligence.
[Beck:] Yes. Frank, let me tell you something, you`re watching this show, you`re a genius. Takes one to know one, too. Back in a second with "The Real Story". Don`t miss it. Frank, thanks a lot.