Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Gifted Vs Bright

My daughther went through some testing in school (TONI-3) and they came back stating she is potentially highly gifted and now want to carry out a WISC-IV which I understand is a more intense test.

Can someone throw light on gifted vs bright and how these tests are able to make out the difference? My daughther has always been a very good test performer, but on the other hand had been perfectly happy in her current class. She does not exhibit the dissatisfaction/unhappiness which I read is a charateritic of a gifted kid.

Can someone throw some light?

Ditto to everything mon said I'll also add that bright, gifted, dull, whatever... having the information from a WISC test is interesting and can give you a lot of info about your child re relative strengths and weaknesses. Schools don't usually offer up WISCs without good reason to think a child is gifted... and getting a WISC done privately usually costs a lot of $.... so I'd give the ok for testing

Best wishes,

polarbear

Don't worry about the terminology - it's just words and there's very little consensus on their meaning anyway (though round here, specifically, people usually mean IQ over 130 when they say gifted, roughly). You and the school need to look at your daughter more than the numbers - but I don't mean by that, don't test. If the school wants to do a WISCIV and will arrange it out probably means they'd be happier having a report from it. There's not much downside - most children enjoy the testing.

One reason for wanting the results is that if your DD's results are very high, this may make it easier for everyone to know she needs challenge. Going through school doing well without much effort is not benign - it can lead to perfectionism and stop children learning to deal with things that are hard for them.

While it seems to be very, very common for highly gifted kids to be dissatisfied with a conventional school environment, it is not universal. There are a few families on these forums with kids who are pg but happy with their age-peers in schools that do not specialize in gifted children.

If I were you, I would definitely go forward with the WISC-IV for the following reason. If she is highly gifted, there is a good chance that she does very well in school with minimal effort. A problem can develop over time if a student does not associate learning and doing well with persistent effort. Perfectionism and other related challenges have been well documented on this forum. It is far easier to address this early on by seeking an environment where a child is truly challenged than to deal with the perfectionism, etc. later on.

(My own dd is now 13 yo and has always scored exceptionally well (even by gifted standards) on standardized tests (Explore, MAP, SAT). She attends a neighborhood public school and has never had a full grade acceleration. She is quite happy with her circle of friends at school, and academics at school have worked out okay so far due to some great teachers (although this is hit and miss), subject acceleration in math, some accommodations in other subjects, and engaging interests outside of school.)

Personally, I tend to use bright as the opposite of dim.

My DD is apparently 'gifted' but I still prefer to use bright when describing her.

YMMV

Agree with what others have shared, and I'll just add that some have used these words to create a distinction between:
gifted as native intelligence or innate ability (a way of thinking and being), discernible by IQ tests
and
bright as what has been learned through opportunity and academics, discernible by achievement tests.

The two are not necessarily mutually exclusive.

The familiar hand-out is found several places online. Here's one.

In a Psychology Today magazine article dated January 2012, Christopher Taibbi discusses Bright/Gifted.

Thanks so much for this thread- I had been wondering the same thing, because there are more and more kids getting into the gifted class, and I couldn't understand why if there is an uneven development in some gifted kids, surely there had to be at least one other kid in my son's class that was similar to him-but it seemed like my son was getting all the grief from his teacher. I had heard they dropped the IQ standard to allow for a more mixed group of students in the classes.. so I was wondering if it was possible that most of the kids in his class were really smart and bright, above average, but maybe not necessarily gifted, and was wondering what the difference would have been.

Well, first of all, social or emotional maladjustment is not a prerequisite for giftedness. It bothers me a bit to constantly encounter the "correlation" between high IQ and unhappiness. Secondly, IQ tests are not that accurate/precise at the tails so it makes more sense to look at the confidence intervals rather than a single number, in which case the bright/moderately gifted labels would overlap. The terms "bright" and "gifted" are used differently by different people at different times as well. Personally, I actually use the term "bright" far more often than "gifted" in reference to my own children, including the DS who cleared the DYS minimums by a large margin.

IMO, there's no bright line between the two things.

It's a situational descriptor, in which "bright" is the synonym for the condition of being in the top quartile, but still fitting well enough within the expectations and culture in which one is operating that it feels GOOD, and comfortable.

"Gifted" is a bit of a misnomer, in my estimation, since I tend to think of this term as referring to the situation in which one's differences from the rest of the population cause one DIFFICULTY in terms of "fit." Being out of synch with peers/colleagues, having to choose between one's inner direction and motivations and those which are external (and feel unnatural or even wrong, or overly simplistic)-- that kind of thing.

Among a peer group which ranges from IQ 125-155, persons like my DH and I are going to find ourselves feeling "bright" but not "gifted."

On the other hand, regular day to day life, we are definitely operating as strangers in a strange land, if you see what I mean.


The higher one's LOG (relative to one's surroundings), the more likely the latter seems to be.

Conversationally, I stick my own concepts onto these. I tend to use bright to represent someone who is engaged and follows thoughtlines well. Sharp for someone who sees discrepancies well. Smart for good forward thinking skills, strategic and insightful things. Gifted as an adjective for a program at a school or to describe someone who has an ability that seems to lie well beyond what the limits of their level of education or training would typically impart upon them. Genius for awesome humor.

But I'll adapt to whatever use the natives have, because communication trumps most things ideological in my book.