Early life adversities—such as poverty or high neighbourhood violence—are a profound obstacle to the healthy development of children. However, new emerging research draws a more nuanced picture in which harsh environments can also shape remarkable adaptive abilities that allow individuals to navigate their lived stresses, referred to as “hidden talents”. Such skills not only build resilience but may also hold transformative potential if harnessed effectively. Building on this idea, we reviewed the literature on stress-adapted behaviours to identify candidates for hidden talents that can be tested in the lab. We identified two such candidates: (a) detection of deception, (b) optimized exploitation of gains under conditions of high uncertainty. For both behaviours, we started to design novel computer-based paradigms that can be used with children. In a first pilot experiment with young adults, we sought to validate the functionality of the paradigms and explore the rich data they create. Next, we plan to refine the experiments for a test run with children to answer our core research questions whether children growing up in adverse environments show enhanced performances in these tasks.