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During the past 20 years, a significant body of literature has emerged focusing on the application of Dabrowski's theory of positive disintegration (TPD) to the study of gifted individuals. Although much of this literature is prescriptive, some research reports spanning this time period are available. A perusal of research on TPD's applicability to gifted individuals indicates that the focus has been Dabrowski's notion of overexcitability (OE). This article reviews OE research, contrasts it with Dabrowski's approach to research with gifted individuals, and argues that researchers should emulate Dabrowski's approach in future investigations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: journal abstract)

This article discusses the current issues involved in the evaluation of children who have both intellectual gifts and a specific learning disability (SLD) in reading. Given recent changes in federal special education law (i.e., the Individuals With Disabilities Education Improvement Act of 2004), the use of a unified assessment model that integrates responsiveness to intervention techniques with state-of-the-art psychometric tools is most appropriate for this population. Use of the Cattell-Horn-Carroll (K.S. McGrew, 2005) and the Planning, Attention, Simultaneous, Successive (J.A. Naglieri & J.P. Das, 1997b) cognitive assessment theories are highlighted due to their clear relevance to the assessment of both intellectual strengths for gifted children and psychological processing weaknesses for children with SLDs. Recommendations for assessment practices and areas in need of further research are explicitly stated. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: journal abstract)

This article discusses the present issue of The Mathematics Enthusiast. Some changes have occurred in the structure of the editorial board of the Journal. This issue of the Journal includes articles which represent wide geographic range and topics. This year there are two focus issues of the Journal planned, one on mathematical giftedness and talent. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)

Reviews the book, Care and education of differently abled by Pankajam (2009). This book identifies the causes of disabilities-mental, physical and social-among the children, and emphasizes the need of special care and education for them. It explains in detail the types of impairment, methods of identification, and educational provision for them, with special focus on physical and health impairment, sensory disabilities, mentally challenged, giftedness, autism, creative child and behavioral disorders. The issue of their rehabilitation has also been addressed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)

Numerous authors propose that creativity is an important component of giftedness. Creativity—the capacity to generate ideas that are new and adaptive—will be examined in terms of its neurocognitive, conative and environmental foundations. For example, research indicates that gifted children show a high degree of integrated interhemispheric coordination favouring cognitive flexibility and divergent thinking. Furthermore, concerning conative factors, such as curiosity, perfectionnism, a thirst for knowledge, and novelty-seeking are linked to high creative potential. In terms of the environment, research shows that some pedagogies improve children's creative potential. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: journal abstract)

Special cognitive structure, persistent and obsessive practice, commitment and a lack of social skills are all phenomena often mentioned in connection with people of outstanding giftedness. In most cases, these arise as a result of a cerebral structure that differs significantly from the usual. Among the specially gifted, atypical cerebral structure is more the rule than the exception. It is not only the highly intelligent who display special cerebral structure; many of the great creators, irrespective of their level of intelligence, show atypical cerebral structure, which is usually associated with some kind of disfunction. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: journal abstract)

Purpose is an internal compass that integrates engagement in activities that affect others, self-awareness of one's reasons, and the intention to continue these activities. We argue that purpose represents giftedness in intrapersonal intelligence, which processes information related to self, identity, self-regulation, and one's place in the world. Purpose is an extraordinary achievement. It is an ideal that young people are expected to accomplish by the end of high school, yet in our mixed methods study, only 26% of our sample overall (N=270 youth age 12-22) expressed a purpose. Still, purpose can be achieved precociously. Some youth achieve purpose much earlier than the norm: 11 6th graders in our sample showed a purpose. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: journal abstract)

Is there an ethical giftedness, and if so, what does it look like? In this article, I consider why ethical behavior is much harder to come by than one would expect. Ethically gifted individuals are able to complete a series of eight steps to action, the failure of any one of which may result in a person, even one who is ethically well trained, to act in a manner that lacks the translation of ethical knowledge into action. Wise people are those who use their abilities for a common good as determined by positive ethical values. Many people identified as gifted through traditional means are nevertheless lacking in ethical gifts, in part because socialization may not reward them for the development of ethical patterns of behavior. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: journal abstract)

The purpose of this article is to discuss the unique personal and psychosocial characteristics of twice-exceptional individuals (a person who has a disability and is regarded as gifted or talented). This article focuses on the description of those characteristics which relate to psychosocial adaptation and attitudes toward disabilities and giftedness. Emphasis is placed on rehabilitation professionals' awareness and knowledge of such characteristics. This knowledge is needed to skillfully develop tailored interventions that will lead into positive education, counseling, or employment outcomes for these individuals. Implications for rehabilitation education, practice, and research are also discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: journal abstract)

There is a fallacy about identifying gifted and talented children and youth that refuses to go away: It is the notion that a single score is sufficient for determining giftedness (see Treffinger, 1982). In the following paragraphs, I address briefly several reasons for the longevity and ubiquity of this myth, as well as the data that call the myth into question. These include (a) the predictive validity of test scores, (b) the belief that ability is fixed, and (c) the lack of attention to and evidence for other explanations for outstanding achievement. The focus of this article is on the academic domains and IQ, as there are few who argue that a single score predicts performance in the visual and performing arts. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)

In the study of neural activity underlying task performance, neuroscientists have discovered that different neural states arise in low and high performers on the same cognitive tasks. What then sets the high performer apart? This article discusses the various neural mechanisms advanced to account for differences between gifted and non-gifted performers. Is there a gender association? Do 'talents' have access to more neural resources? Or do they just use their resources more efficiently? And what is the role of practice and motivation in achieving expertise? (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: journal abstract)

Do gifted students adjust poorly to their social environment? There are currently two competing positions: one that sustains that giftedness is by itself a risk factor for social adaptation, and another that holds that high cognitive abilities involve distinctive features that are protective and hence increase individual resilience. Empirical support has been provided for both positions. This paper provides data from a study performed with 50 Spanish-speaking gifted children and adolescents using a comparison group of 50 average-ability peers matched by sex and chronological age. The results show no significant differences between gifted students and their peers on global measures of adjustment. Instead, they suggest that gifted students are neither significantly more poorly nor better adjusted than their peers during different age periods. Our analysis of the results provides moderate support for the resilience position. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: journal abstract)

The inclusive school responding to the students differences and to the opportunities' equality should consider the education of the gifted and talented students. In this work, we take curricular adaptation and curricular differentiation as the main intervention points centered on individual differences. We also defend the complementary use of the educational practices (acceleration, grouping and enrichment) explaining each one of them and presenting some studies about their efficacy. We briefly describe the practices for gifted studentes in Portugal and highlight the importance of the school staff sensitivity to understand giftedness. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: journal abstract)

Based on data from a sample of 106 students in grades 2 through 8, we explored the psychometric integrity of the Universal Academic, Cognitive, Creativity, Emotion Screening Scale (Universal ACCESS; R. S. McCallum & B. A. Bracken, in press). We obtained Cronbach's alphas ranging from .95 to .98 across the eight scales of the Universal ACCESS. Concurrent validity, based on comparisons of the eight scales with “like” constructs from the Gifted Rating Scales (S. I. Pfeiffer & T. Jarosewich, 2003), the Bar-On Emotional Quotient Inventory: Youth Version (J. D. Bar-On & R. Parker, 2000), and the Terra Nova Comprehensive Test of Basic Skills (CTB, 1996), produced correlations ranging from .46 to .85 ( p < .001). All Universal ACCESS scale means were significantly higher ( p < .001) for 53 students participating in a gifted and talented program than for matched nongifted peers. We discuss implications for screening gifted students using an instrument that deemphasizes language abilities. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: journal abstract)

This article focuses on the underrepresentation of African American males in gifted and talented programs, and offers a number of key recommendations to practitioners and researchers who seek viable strategies to circumvent this problem. Beyond the focus on underrepresentation, several additional topics for discussion are excogitated to provide a clear perspective on the challenges these students experience in school; namely, (a) definitions of giftedness, (b) identity development, (c) student Millennial culture, and (d) how gifted African American Millennial males in school contexts are treated. Additionally, data collected from a recent study of a large Midwestern school district will be presented to further highlight the topics under investigation. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: journal abstract)

This piece is a poetic and narrative inquiry (Leggo, 2004) into the conceptual, physical, and emotional underpinnings of research methodology in the field of gifted education. First, the author explores the metaphorical possibility of swimming rather than standing in the field of inquiry and how relationships to self, environment, and other would shift in ways potentially commensurate with the task of researching giftedness. Then, responses to a questionnaire asking researchers about their understandings, hopes, and fears in the use of “nontraditional” methodologies in the field of gifted education are explored through the creation of poetic aphorisms. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: journal abstract)

This paper explores the unique mind of the twentieth-century American artist Joseph Cornell, known for his boxes and collages made with "found" materials. The author interpolates reflections upon Cornell with vignettes from the treatment of a young child, speculating that certain individuals may possess a constellation of vulnerabilities/sensitivities that constitute what is referred to as a "cosmic" sensibility. It is suggested that such an orientation can lead variously to anxieties and separation problems, as well as (or in addition to) intellectual and/or artistic giftedness. The outcome of such dynamics would depend on a complex interplay of temperament, circumstance, and relational attunement. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: journal abstract)

This reflection relates to the passage between childhood and adolescence, and postulates that the experience of puberty troubles the defensive intellectual overinvestment of the latency period. I suspect that in the gifted adolescent, giftedness, which is founded upon still-active infantile depression, does not enable construction of the psychical dams freud speaks of; it is only a narcissistic show which collapses at the appearance of pubertary emergences. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: journal abstract)

Gifted intelligence is underpinned by those aspects of neural function that enable an enhanced facility to engage in fluid analogizing: a cognitive-level construct that describes intermodule information articulation within the brain. Evidence for this claim comes from a program of neuroimaging investigations of the neural underpinnings and IQ correlates of fluid analogizing coupled with theoretical modeling of high creative intelligence that contextualizes fluid analogizing within related executive neural functions. In particular, a gifted person's high ability at fluid analogizing as a cognitive process enables his or her more efficacious working memory, the most critical consequence of high-level prefrontal cortical functioning. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: journal abstract)

The articles in this issue span from investigating relationships between brain structure and human intelligence, neuropsychological profiles of savants, functional brain patterns of mathematical processing in gifted adolescents, and functional brain patterns of fluid analogizing to a proposed, expanded model for locating studies of twice-exceptional individuals within medical models of disability. Each of these articles represents one or more important pieces of work that comment on the biological nature of ability and performance. While the number of individuals who could contribute to this topic from a primary source point of view are few, there is much ground to cover in this emerging field. Imaging methods themselves are highly technical and sophisticated yet still yield very rudimentary knowledge about the brain contingent upon narrow and conditional contexts for interpretation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)