Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment What IQ is considered Highly Gifted??

Hi all, I see various definitions of HG and I'm trying to understand.

I see on Hoagies that Dr. Ruf considers a lower IQ on SB5 HG versus the one I've seen/heard more often of 145?

Do the new tests change our definitions?

Thanks

Well, the old SB-LM--which is not in regular use anymore--had a higher ceiling than the WISC and the SB-5. They top out at 160, and even with extended scoring (which has only come out in the past few years), I think it's still true that you literally cannot see scores of 180 or 200 now. Those high-high scores are impossible on the current tests.

145 is the DYS cutoff, which they consider to be PG, or "beyond the ability of tests to measure."

I like Dottie's term HG+ for that, since I don't think my DS8 is in the realm of some of the other DYS kids who really are amazingly PG. But he's clearly more GT than "just" HG (and I use the quotation marks not (incorrectly) for emphasis there, as so many people use them, but in the ironic sense).

If the range of GTness includes GT/MG/HG/EG/PG, where GT starts at 115-ish, and tests which are NOT made to test the tails of the Bell Curve anyway only go to 160, it's clear that the HG/EG/PG range is going to be tough to tell apart.

somehow I can't quick quote your edit Kriston, LOL, but I heard in a thread a while back that on the SB-5 extended scoring can go to 220.

http://giftedissues.davidsongifted....4/Re_Score_interpretation.html#Post69074

Certainly those 180-ish+ scores aren't the norm and require extra effort on the part of either tester or parent. Most HG+ kids are going to be given scores of 160 or below, even if they're PPPPPPPG+.

I totally agree. DS5 numbers fit with our LOG, which just made sense for us. It wasn't anything new really. If only schools were interested more in LOG and not IQ though, then we could have saved the money : )

I third that.

The testing helped us to make sense of things, to make decisions, and it made it so that we couldn't indulge our GT denial. But that was only true because the stuff he was doing was clearly HG+.

The big picture is what matters.

Oh, and if 2E issues are suspected, I think testing can be pretty important, since those HG+ behaviors may not be happening as clearly due to masking by the LDs.

@Kriston, which test is best if you think LD's are in play?

I think that depends on the type of LD issues you are seeing. A good psychologist should be able to recommend testing to elucidate the problem(s).

Language processing and expressive language; cognitive was through the roof at 4.