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

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.


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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.