GIFTED CHILD

GIFTED CHILD

        Intellectual giftedness is an intellectual ability significantly higher than average. It is a characteristic of children, variously defined, that motivates differences in school programming. It is thought to persist as a trait into adult life, with various consequences studied in longitudinal studies of giftedness over the last century. There is no generally agreed definition of giftedness for either children or adults, but most school placement decisions and most longitudinal studies over the course of individual lives have been based on IQ in the top 2 percent of the population, that is above IQ 130.

          The various definitions of intellectual giftedness include either general high ability or specific abilities. For example, by some definitions an intellectually gifted person may have a striking talent for mathematics without equally strong language skills. In particular, the relationship between artistic ability or musical ability and the high academic ability usually associated with high IQ scores is still being explored, with some authors referring to all of those forms of high ability as "giftedness," while other authors distinguish "giftedness" from "talent." There is still much controversy and much research on the topic of how adult performance unfolds from trait differences in childhood, and what educational and other supports best help the development of adult giftedness.

            Many schools use a variety of assessments of students' capability and potential when identifying gifted children.These may include portfolios of student work, classroom observations, achievement tests, and IQ test scores. Most educational professionals accept that no single criterion can be used in isolation to accurately identify a gifted child.

              One of the criteria used in identification may be an IQ test score. Until the late 1960 s, when “giftedness” was defined by an IQ score, a school district simply set an arbitrary score (usually in the 130 range) and a student either did or did not “make the cut”. It is no longer accepted today in academic circles; however, it's still used by many school districts because it is simple and not entirely without merit. Although a high IQ may have fallen out of favor as a measure to define giftedness, the fact remains that, if a student has a very high IQ, it is a significant indicator of a student’s academic potential (Gross, 2004). Correspondingly, if a student scores highly on an IQ test, but performs at an average or below average level academically, this warrants further investigation. 

               IQ classification varies from one publisher to another. IQ tests do not have validity for determining test-takers' rank order at higher IQ levels, and are perhaps only effective at determining whether a student is gifted rather than distinguishing among levels of giftedness. The Wechsler tests have a standard score ceiling of 150. Today, the Wechsler Intelligence Adult Scale or WAIS is used by most hospitals, government agencies, schools, and military. Someone with a 180 or more Stanford-Binet or Cattell IQ test may only score in lower to mid-140's on the WAIS. This has prompted some authors on identification of gifted children to promote the Stanford-Binet form L-M, which has long been obsolete, as the only test with a sufficient ceiling to identify the exceptionally and profoundly gifted, despite the Stanford-Binet L-M never having been normed on a representative national sample. Because the instrument is outdated, current results derived from the Stanford-Binet L-M generate inflated and inaccurate scores.

              The IQ assessment of younger children remains debated. Also, intelligence tests are generally designed to measure cognitive factors and may not identify as gifted individuals whose talents lie in other areas such as music or the arts. 

              While many people believe giftedness is a strictly quantitative difference, measurable by IQ tests, a number of people have described giftedness as a fundamentally different way of perceiving the world, which in turn affects every experience had by the gifted individual. This view is doubted by some scholars who have closely studied gifted children longitudinally.