Arizona toddler with 160 IQ admitted to Mensa

She's not even in kindergarten yet, but a 3-year-old Arizona girl has been accepted into an exclusive global society known for its brain power.

With an IQ above 160, Alexis Martin, of suburban Queen Creek, is now the youngest member in the Arizona chapter of Mensa, a Phoenix television station reported.

Alexis, who reads at a fifth-grade level and taught herself Spanish using her parents' iPad, qualified by scoring among the top 2 per cent of the general population on a standardized intelligence test, her father said.

Ian Martin told local ABC15 in an interview that the family began noticing that something about their daughter was different when she was just a year old.

"She would recite her bedtime story from the night before," he told the station. "She didn't just recite them, she recited them exactly."

Martin told ABC15 that Alexis, who started reading at age 2, can be amazing with her special gift.

"Anytime she learns a word and just picks it up through anything, she never ever uses it in the incorrect context," he said.

Martin could not be reached for comment by Reuters on Wednesday.

Alexis is one of 3,300 Mensa members under the age of 18 in the US, with another 56,000 adults belonging to the group nationwide, a spokeswoman for the organisation said.