MON and Jesse:
I had to go back and reread some of the Miraca Gross book in order to try to answer your question. Here are some of the more interesting tidbits that I've seen so far.
Most of the children in the book have an IQ in the 160 to 175+ range. I believe that these scores are from the Stanford-Binet L-M test. I think that I probably misspoke earlier, in that all of the kids probably needed radical acceleration. Instead her research breaks them down into three categories: Those who received radical acceleration, those who received a token one-year acceleration, and those who received no acceleration. The last group fairs the worse in terms of self-esteem, social relationships, and motivation in school.
Here is an interesting paragraph though: (page 268)
Furthermore, the majority of individaul IQ tests, such as the WISC III, also have ceilings which are too low to assess the intellectual capacity of most highly gifted students and are quite impractical for the assessment of the exceptionally or profoundly gifted. Several of the children in this study who scored in the high 140's on the WISC-III's predecessor, the WISC-R, subsequently scored at 160+ on the Stanford-Binet L-M. As related earlier, Jessica, when tested on the WISC-III, scored in the moderately gifted range!
I don't know, MON, if the extended scale on the WISC-IV helps this or not. I agree that it would be wonderful to have some type of data comparing IQs on current tests with IQs on older tests. As parents, we would then have an easier time understanding the research that was published 20+ years ago. Research on HG+ kids is difficult to find as is. It shouldn't be made more difficult by trying to interpret research findings based on IQ test that change every so often. Perhaps the Davidson Institute should apply for a grant to give free testing to their 1600 or so kids? We would make a nice, statistically significant data base.
Doesn't someone out there need data for a PhD in this field? I would happily sign my child up for free testing.
From page 279:
It cannot be sufficiently emphasized that the problems of social isolation, peer rejection, loneliness and alienation which afflict many highly gifted children arise not our of their exceptional intellectual abilities but as a result of society's response to them. These problems arise when the school, the education system, or the community refuses to create for the exceptionally gifted child a peer group based not on the accident of chronological age but on a commonality of abilities, interests and values. Only through the creation of such a group can exceptionally or profoundly gifted children be freed from the taunts and jeers of age-peers, the pressure to camouflage their abilities in a desperate and futile struggle to conceal their differences, and the frightening sense of being the one-eyed man in the country of the blind who is distrusted and resented because he has vision- or perhaps because of what he can see.
Hollingworth (1942) reported that, in her longitudinal study of profoundly gifted young people, the most successful interventions occurred when the children were identified earlier, rather than later, in their elementary schooling, and were either accelerated or placed in a class with other gifted children. She claimed that it was between the ages of 4 and 9 that the social difficulties experienced by children of IQ 160+ were most acute. The present study mirrors Hollingworth's findings. Indeed, as one traces the history of the 18 young people in this book, it can be clearly seen that, in the majority of cases, the seeds of their future successes or difficulties were sown in the early years of school.
One last note: (page 281)
In every case, the young people who have radically accelerated have found both outstanding academic success and the 'sure shelter' of a warm and supportive friendship group....Some of the young people have not yet found that 'sure shelter'. In the majority of cases these are the young people who remained, for much of their elementary schooling, in an unfacilitative classroom setting with age-peers, or children only a year older, who would have had little comprehension of the ideas, interests, and with who one has little, or virtually nothing in common.
Indeed, a striking finding of this study is that, the earlier exceptionally and profoundly gifted children are placed in a setting which is deliberately structured to allow them access, not to age-peers but to children at similar stages of cognitive and affective development, the greater will be their capacity to form sound friendships in their later childhood, adolescent and adult years.
I hope this helps! Thanks for pointing out that there is access to her work on the internet. I have not taken advantage of this yet and will happily cruise the net looking for more data.
