Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional Hyperlexia or high IQ

Stuttering is not incompatible with high verbal intelligence. The former is a speech impediment, while the latter is a language gift. Just because his oral-motor skills for speech were weaker, does not mean his cognitive language abilities were also weak.

The balanced profile is not notably less typical than an unbalanced (high GAI/low CPI) profile, in GT profiles. So both your DS and your DD have profiles that are reasonable for very high ability individuals.

Similarities is a measure of abstract verbal reasoning/verbal concept formation. Although responses are purely verbal, it requires very little expressive language, which allows for nonverbose individuals to perform without penalty. It is also untimed, which reduces some of the stress that stutterers feel under time constraints.

Your DD's FSIQ is actually lower also because VCI and VSI are reversed, and VCI is weighted twice as much into the FSIQ as VSI is.

Re: stuttering, the only person I knew who stuttered was highly gifted, particularly in verbal areas. He was an excellent writer and eventually was fluent in five languages. In his childhood, I don't think anyone listening to him would have predicted those outcomes.

That's just wrong!!! Doesn't say much for all of the engineers out there... Why would verbal skills be more valued than visual-spatial?

Do you see high VSI coupled more with lower WMI/PSI scores? I think I am like that a lot. More spacey but very conceptual and great at engineering architecture tasks and general brainstorming. I know I do much better with written questions than with any verbal requests or lectures.

Can I reach out to you for GAI calculation again? I have test subscores.

I've seen a couple of papers reporting as much as one standard deviation of difference in IQ in stuttering boys compared to general population. So yes, I agree there is a connection and it is almost always positively correlated with intelligence. I wonder what it is that ties the two together. How are expressive speech disruption and high IQ related?

I know, discriminates against VS learners, right? But the analysis of standardization data resulted in this weighting...I wouldn't say I see it often associated with low WM/PS, but I do have at least one relative for which that is the case. And yes, engineer.

Feel free to pm me.

It just means that there were not enough STEM-minded people in the standardization sample!!! I work with 50-60 engineers on daily basis and I can tell you that there are clearly two types of us - less creative but with an excellent attention spans, and much more out-of-the-box, unpredictable, but with little to no attention to details. We need both types to succeed but there is little that is common between the two groups.

In NZ we have a children's commissioner who was before that a judge who studied law because one of his teachers said something along the lines of "with that stutter you better not be a lawyer". I stutter sometimes when I am thinking ahead of what I am saying, I also leave the ends off words when writing sometimes. Maybe it is just an overload thing.

My father stutters so it is genetic for us. My speech isn't clear and when I talk fast about quantum states in photons (which is all I do) nobody understands me

With my son it is a little bit different. There are so called "secondary" aspects to his stuttering... Sound repetition by itself isn't that common or serious for him. The biggest concern is with his start-of-the-sentence blocking and changing his face expression as if he just swallowed a lemon when he tries to overcome the block. It isn't common, but it is obvious. He can completely avoid it if he focuses on his strategies, but what 8yo does it all the time?
We took him to a neuropsych - same people who saw him for his PDD-NOS when he was younger (he lost that dx), and they didn't really find any pathology. So we don't know much....

In that case it should be better when he is older and can apply techniques more consistently.