Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional Percent of 2E kids

Anyone know what is the percent of 2E kids in the normal population? And specifically the percent of HG+ kids that also have a LD?

If for example, a kid with iq >160 occurs 1:10,000 to 100,000 what's the incidence of a kid that's 2E with iq>160 like 1:1,000,000???

Review article on 2e from NAGC researchers, which estimates prevalence as ~300,000 in the USA:

http://maxwellgate.pbworks.com/w/fi...calInvestigationTwice-Exceptionality.pdf

Same information, in an NAGC white paper:

https://www.nagc.org/sites/default/files/Position%20Statement/twice%20exceptional.pdf

I've also seen 2-5%. The research is not particularly clear, as investigators use different definitions of both categories of exceptionality.

More recent research, looking at the % of disabled children who were assessed at 120+ (90+ %ile) on at least one WJIII achievement measure. They came up with 9% of disabled students:

http://masseyuniversity.mrooms.net/...a%20Special%20Education%20Population.pdf

There is some evidence that ADHD is evenly distributed across the cognition bell curve, and that LD is not (the previous citation references 36% of LD students potentially identifiable as gifted--keeping in mind that most standard definitions of LD rule out everyone below average a priori, so you're starting the discussion from only the upper half of the population).

In HG+ kids, even less is known.

This is an interesting local effort to identify 2e learners, which focused on already identified GT students (90+%ile), and found about 15-20% of them were 2e. It also includes what they did to try to remediate the other exceptionality.

http://www.stthomas.edu/media/project2excel/pdf/RevisedCombinedP2XAdminstratorUpdate2011.pdf

Thank you
The articles were very helpful. Sheds some light on this mystery of 2e kids.

I don't have a lot of stats, but probabilities for 2E and high IQ wouldn't multiply like that (going from 1e4 to 1e6). The two components are highly correlated, so mathematically, their probabilities would be of similar order. The correlation grows starting at around IQ of 125 and reaches almost 0.9 at 160, meaning that majority of the HG+ individuals are not neurotypical, but it could be very minor.

I'll find the references and post it.

Wow! .9 correlation at iq>160?

That means people at extremely high IQs, the brain has a hard time balancing high functioning in all general areas, and actually starts depleting some parts of the cortex. The brain is essentially at full capacity and must balance this by having weak areas resulting in SLDs, ASP, and ADHD, dyslexia etc.

So around 140-150 iq, less 2E occurrences because the brain isn't at full capacity and can balance effectively? So therefore, the more average iq a person has the more well rounded they can essentially be, but not necessarily especially great at one thing?

I wouldn't leap to that conclusion. While I don't know the reason for this high correlation, one might speculate that
a) Exceptionally gifted individuals have brains that are somehow physiologically different from neurotypicals. This might mean that the brain is wired to do certain things really well but other things not so well. (e.g. a sports car vs. a hybrid vs. a tow truck when considering speed, gas mileage, and brute power)
b) Brains are remarkably plastic, especially in childhood. It's possible that some extremely gifted individuals focused on building certain skills to the detrimental neglect of others. This may be neither inevitable nor permanent but would require work to remedy (e.g. OT, PT etc; or earlier just guiding the child to spend time developing skills that don't interest them as much).

Both a) and b) might be completely wrong, but I wouldn't leap to conclusions without solid research. Also fwiw my understanding is that from fMRI studies etc we appear to use our brains far below their full capacity.

So I'm jumping in with no expertise of any kind here, but a lot of the language above really strikes me: weakness, detrimental neglect, depleting.... Two thoughts strike me.

1) Most LDs are not "weaknesses", evolutionarily speaking. Reading and writing, for instance, are recent inventions, and only even more recently have they become common expectations for all people. What is actually surprising is that so many people have brains designed to be able to automatically do functions which have no evolutionary use, let alone advantage. So most common LDs are only weaknesses in the construct of living in this exact moment of time and geography. And the biggest ones, in reading and writing, are severely exacerbated by the idiosyncrasies of the extremely illogical way we have developed the English alphabet and spelling (it's dramatically less debilitating to be dyslexic in Spanish). Even ADHD has some notable advantages - if you are not living in a modern, sit-quiet-at-a-desk-all-day-long-and-comply-society.

2) Now here I am just totally speculating, but the more I research, the more it seems to me that the more brains differ from the norm in one respect, the more they are likely to differ in numerous respects. It's not just one single function (that which we measure as IQ) that is different while everything else stays exactly the same. Rather, it all feels to me like the further one is from the norm, the more that brain simply functions differently from the norm in an increasing numbers of ways. The more intense thinking is part of a package of more intense feeling and sensitivity to what is experienced, resulting in some people truly experiencing the world in a qualitatively (and not just quantitatively) different way than most. Asynchrony, overexcitabilities, sensory issues, ASD might all be aspects of brains that just function differently from the norm. And these different and intense ways of experiencing the world may be part of what enables the different thinking, rather than a detrimental cost of it.

No proof of any of this, of course, but it's a different way of thinking about 2E. I personally find it helpful to recognize just how absolutely unnatural and discordant, evolutionarily speaking, modern school expectations are - for behaviour as well as functioning - for a significant portion of the human race. Instead of asking "Why can't my kids do this?", it's interesting to contemplate the question "Why should we ever expect any group of children to all be able to do this?"

I think very similarly to Platypus101 - school is an artificial construct. We are trying to teach to one type of student, which is an average that doesn't really exist in real life- it just hopefully works for the majority of kids.

I tend to think of my children as wired tighter than NT kids, and so all sorts of stuff comes with that. I tend to think in terms of "is their giftedness working for them or against them" rather than 2e specifically. For the kids where their brain configurations are working very efficiently in a particular way, they may be better adapted to the artificial constructs of modern society. For other gifted kids, their brains may measure similarly on an iq scale, but might be better adapted for a different type of developmental model in which adhd or other things we consider to be deficits are actually assets.

I think in the case of some disabilities, this is probably the case. My DD with ADHD doesn't filter anything out. She would do great as a caveman watching out for wooly mammoth to hunt. Not so great sitting in school when 30 kids are surrounding her talking and she's expected to figure out 982 divided by 36.

DS, on the other hand, would be dead as a caveman, with his coordination issues, he probably would have been eaten by a wooly mammoth. He doesn't function all that well in modern society either, the challenges are just different.

Spit-take! My DD doesn't have ADHD but she doesn't miss anything, either. Wound up tight and would imagine wooly mammoth if there weren't a real one around to scare her into flight!

DS would be a dead-caveman, too. Not because of coordination challenges, but because he wouldn't notice he was being eaten until he was half-digested.