Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Defining PG

What do you use as a definition for profoundly gifted?

On this Davidson press kit page, I see IQ > 145 is called PG: http://presskit.ditd.org/Davidson_Institute_Press_Kit/ditd_IQ_and_Educational_Needs.html But, they don't state on which test.

On this Hoagies page (http://www.hoagiesgifted.org/highly_profoundly.htm), I see WISC-IV of 152-160 is PG.

Many of the books I've seen about giftedness seem to include IQ scores from older tests (like SB-LM, which has a much higher range) that are unavailable now.

Current tests, like the WISC-IV and SB-V, have different scales than older tests and don't give such high scores, and so older IQ ranges don't really fit for currently used tests.

A school district in my city has a program that they describe as being for highly and profoundly gifted kids. To apply, a kid must have an IQ of 140+ OR score 97% or higher in at least 2 areas (assumably on the CoGAT).

my dd4 is 147 on the wppsi,(I think - >99.9%) there is no way she is PG. I would go with the 152 - 160.

I would say based on observations that DD is borderline HG and EG, although there are definitely days where I think she is on the left side of the curve too....

I have wondered about this too. If we look at tests that top out at 160 I'm not sure either what cutoffs are used, and whether FSIQ or GAI can be used.

And ultimately on a practical level what does this mean to a parent - how is MG vs HG vs EG vs PG different in terms of meeting a child's needs.

makes it tricky when you see 2 diff interpretations of the WISC4 side by side, although the higher scores are for extended norms.

I'm still going with HG/EG for dd

Interestingly the site you reference above has two sets of number for the WISC-IV -- one for regular scores and one for use with extended norms. The numbers you quoted are for the extended norms while the numbers for the FSIQ on WISC-IV without extended norms are:

138-145 = HG
146-152 = EG
152-160 = PG

By this measure our DD is PG (the tester offered to do the extended norms, but at the time we didn't want to pay for it). On this list, I think I've referred to her as HG/PG.

Honestly, outside of a place like this where the terms are simply used to give an idea of general context to other parents, it's all just semantics anyway.

The general consensus seems to be that MG kids without a second E will tend to do well in a regular classroom. HG/EG/PG kids will begin to have issues caused by social disconnect and the need for additional acceleration. It's really just a matter of degree and this is more a factor of the individual child (with their LOG, but also their social skills, quirks, emotional status, etc.).

How the wider world might use the terms, well that's up for grabs.

I think that cognitive giftedness is too complex to be labeled with IQ tests alone, especially because an FSIQ is a distillation of several factors, and GAI is a distillation of a few factors that ignores others. IMO, IQ scores are important, but are a long way from the whole picture.

I tend to look at cognitive talent as resulting from a combination of factors (creative ability, ability to focus/get stuff done, degree to which authority --- including accepted ideas --- is questioned or not, etc.), with the rarity of each factor playing a role in overall raw ability.


Then there is environment, which is more than just the home. There's also the overall environment in a nation. For example, right now the US environment for doing scientific research isn't great, due to funding problems and the use of industrial metrics to measure what is really a creative endeavor.


------------

In all honesty, I think that there's a tendency to sensationalize cognitive talent and IQ in western society. There are lots of published stories about kids who have "Einstein IQs" or who write symphonies when they're 4 or who can master something without repetition or with very little repetition. Personally, I think that a lot of these stories are exaggerated, which pushes other people to exaggerate and gives the whole thing an unfortunately high level of inertia. TBH, sometimes I feel like some of the stuff I read here is exaggerated, and I wonder if it happens because people are responding to other exaggerations because they feel they need to keep up with them.

The result is a skewed but accepted perception of what "gifted" means, and it can lead people to underestimate a child's abilities. For example, teachers not knowledgeable about giftedness can read this stuff and believe that "gifted" means that the kid wrote a symphony or a novel before starting kindergarten, and this (or something like it) is the true meaning of gifted. So if your kid is just reading, he's not really gifted, because they all even out by 3rd grade, except for the ones who write sym-pho-nies at 3, and we don't have any kids like that here. ETA: I'm not claiming that everyone thinks this way, just that I suspect it's likely that some people do.

Sure, there are children who do amazing things at very young ages, but IMO, defining "giftedness" by that standard isn't a good idea. There are also people who do amazing things in theirs 20s, 30, 40s, and so on.

Actually, I get that a lot whenever I dare use the g word.
Which is why I'd love to explain giftedness more in terms of what level a child is working at compared to an average child or grade level, and at what pace and what level of intellectual abstraction a child learns best at, to what degree a child perceives rule based systems and to what extent it needs to perceive them, as compared to a average/grade level child, or what a certain level of giftedness means in relation to classroom numbers. Because really that is what so called gifted services should be: the opportunity to learn at your level, at an appropriate pace and level of abstraction, complexity and depth, an with an appropriate peer group. Who cares about identification, labels, pull outs or enrichment projects if, in whatever fashion, at least for an appreciable amount of time, those needs are met.
Understanding intensity is, IMO, the icing on the cage and really not the job of curriculum planners.

Edited to add that understanding intensity of course van be a lifesaver for us parents, and of course some of us happen to be curriculum planners too. But offering appropriate learning to all learners, including gifted learners is what public schools should focus on, and advocacy with schools/districts/policy makers should focus on.

This is one of the reasons I like to just use HG+ here (another us the confusion about different cutoffs in different tests/using different norms as has been mentioned). Being this far off the "average" concerning learning needs, being one Ina 1000+ - it is a distance not bridge able with the "usual" measures,such as differentiation, makes our kids so much of an outlier that ordinary parental advice or methods must be dismissed. This is what we have all in common. Again, I am sure there can be huge differences between what may work for an HG or a PG kid, whatever that is, but the commonality is that the solution must be individual and this just doesn't happen to parents whose kids do not have exceptionalities, by definition.

For us, the only point in numerical values would be to remove barriers to entry into appropriate educational/cognitive activities.

DD is one of the rare individuals in our families who has not been tested. The rest of us are a variety of flavors of "gifted" as noted, and most of the older generation were evaluated at one time or another with SB-LM. I mention that because of the higher range on that one, and the fact that this gives us a wider set of data to draw from in understanding how temperment/personality (which are also somewhat heritable) play alongside of the numbers in order to produce a whole which is more than the sum of its parts, so to speak.

That said, it's really clear that there is a continuum of cognitive ability in our extended families (all four of them, I mean-- DH's and mine)-- and we had a very good basis for understanding DD's likely educational needs without having "the number" for her in particular.

I sometimes feel a little bit defensive about our decision to not test DD. The world tends to see us as TigerParents from hell when they look at how we've parented her, and her achievements (that is, we have high expectations, and she very definitely has perfectionism problems, but those two things are not at all what they appear on the surface). I'm sure that there are those who (on the other hand) doubt that it's really her doing what she does, and that we are somehow hothousing our way to a child that looks PG, for reasons all our own.

We're not, and I'm okay with all of that. Part of our reasoning in NOT having the number is that pretty much no good can come of it in our opinion. Either it's what we think, in which case-- well and good, but why did we need the validation since it doesn't gain us anything? Or perhaps it's higher than we think, in which case-- well, it still wouldn't change where we live or our other limitations in what is possible for her personally, and it WOULD draw unwanted attention and expectations/pressure from anyone that learned about the value. (My dad-- the person in both families that she most resembles, faced this problem all his life, and it had a horrible impact on him to be a sideshow freak.) OR-- it is lower than we think, in which case we get to spend a long time chasing why we have a value that nobody who knows our DD can seriously believe is correct. She can be capricious and oppositional, and given what we already know about her, she could potentially fool an unwary or inexperienced tester.

In short, I agree strongly with both Val and Tigerle. It is just a set of numbers, and it's not a perfect proxy for what it is attempting to measure. I'm not at all against such evaluations in practice or in principal-- and I'm also completely okay with the idea that for some kids at very high LOG, it's so obvious what they are that it's not really necessary. We were rather fortunate in that our daughter seems to be one of them.

Achievement level alone has unlocked every door that DD wanted opened to her.

Those that would have required testing for access were also the things that we felt she probably lacked the maturity for in other ways (asynchrony), so they didn't matter much to us.

A different family might have needed the numbers, or maybe just wanted them. We might have, too, but for our circumstances being what they are/were. We've also learned to consider the consequences of having numbers versus not knowing them, too. I used to think that more numbers was always a good thing. But I learned that not all numbers are usable data, and those that aren't just diminish your quality of life along the way. Philosophical of me, I suppose.

Howler Karma - Great reply. This is my main point in the conundrum of testing.

I agree with what HK said, I think knowing why you need the number is very important before testing. For me, we don't have an "obviously gifted" child - that combined with a good dose of imposter syndrome from her parents AND living in the most modest of cities in modest little NZ meant that I would have the data to back up getting her needs met. I just didn't trust myself to advocate without it.

As for what LOG that is purely for DH and I, we both research the hell out of everything so this was just another bit of info to throw in the mix. It also does help put things into perspective at times to see where along the curve DD fits when other parents are comparing her to their MG or NT child. I haven't come across a PG child yet (that I know of!) Although due to the great news over here right now there has been a lot of reporting on teenagers doing amazing things in school, so I know they are out there.