Scientists and laypeople agree on high ability as a defining feature of giftedness. Yet their views on gifted people's socioemotional characteristics diverge. Most studies find the gifted to be similar or slightly superior to average-ability persons in these domains ("harmony hypothesis"). However, subjective conceptions and media representations, most of which have focused on gifted children a...

From my study in the field of gifted education it became apparent that published works related to perceptions of what constitutes giftedness began with a narrow view focused on achievement in intelligence tests and in the latter part of the twentieth century developed to a much broader view. In the New Zealand context the work of BevanBrown (1996, 1999) with New Zealand Maori provided a new and...

In this review, on the base of the literature data on the strong connection between high intelligence in pre/adolescents and high testosterone level in the prenatal fetus development and also on the increased concentration of testosterone in the amniotic liquid in the case of monozygotic male-twins pregnancy, the hypothesis of biologically conditioned intellectual giftedness in the monozygotic ...

Embedded in the contemporary issue of gifted education is the contentious notion of ability grouping. The debate surrounding appropriate educational provision for gifted students continues to argue the cognitive and affective influences of ability grouping on gifted students. While recognising the various forms of intellectual giftedness, analysis of the research about mathematically gifted stu...

More is known about the characteristics and needs of gifted students with learning disabilities today than in the past, as more educators understand that children with high potential can simultaneously struggle with academic tasks at school. However, many of these students are not identified as requiring services, and if they are, it is for only 1 exceptionality. This absence of knowledge about...

Giftedness researchers have long debated whether there is empirical evidence to support a distinction between giftedness and attained level of achievement. In this paper we propose a general theoretical framework that establishes scientific criteria for acceptable evidence of superior reproducible performance, which any theory of exceptional performance must explain. We review evidence for supe...

Why and how should a society devote special resources to the development of giftedness in young people for the twenty-first century? If we agree that the goals of gifted education and talent development are to maximize young people’s opportunities for self-fulfillment and increase society’s reservoir of creative problem solvers and producers of knowledge, then it would seem wise that programmin...

Neuroscience has advanced our understanding of the neurological basis of reading disability (RD). Yet, no functional imaging work has been reported on the twice-exceptional dyslexic: individuals exhibiting both non-verbal-giftedness and RD. We compared groups of reading-disabled (RD), non-verbally-gifted (G), non-verbally-gifted-RD (GRD), and control (C) adults on validated word-rhyming and spa...