Intellectual Giftedness is the Other End of the Developmental Spectrum

Sunday, September 6, 2009

While many would discuss the aspects of developmental disorder and learning disabilities, this article would like to focus more on intellectual giftedness and present a general view upon what defines intellectual giftedness and the many forms that exist in the world today. The traditional way to describe it is the intellectual ability that is much higher than what is commonly found in most people. We are talking about children in this article and the phenomenon that most of the intellectually gifted children often develop their mental faculties at a far faster rate than their physical growth can catch up with; which would make them seem wiser and far older than their age.

One good example of a prodigious talent would be of course Albert Einstein, who developed his speech and cognitive functions at a rate so explosive, his natural growth hormones were not able to keep up. It is believed that intellectual giftedness is defined when children of an acceptable age seem to accelerate through the various stages of development as defined by scientist like Freud and Jean Piaget. They seem to have advanced sensual, intellectual, emotional, imaginative and psychomotor functions, far above what normal children are able to accomplish. They learn and are able to absorb and apply information at an astonishing speed and what sets them apart from the normal children is their ability to evolve information intrinsically and re create or create completely new incarnations of what they have learned. This would explain why Mozart was able to recreate such fantastic music, after grasping its basic principles within a short time and re creating it with his own touch.

How do you identify giftedness? Well there are many ways for you to recognise this and they are often associated with IQ tests or event more unconventional methods of testing. Some schools have specialised teachers who are trained to identify children who are gifted, often when they have fulfilled the tenets of either challenging current curricula or proposing theories back to the teachers. This is often broken down into further categories of leadership, artistic creativity and academic performance. While these are the more traditional ways of identifying giftedness, there are better ways of testing which include observation and application of more advanced test that far supersede the standard IQ test currently being employed.

One of the more eccentric qualities of intellectually gifted people are their tendency to have perfectionism, which in essence is their constant high standards and judging of those who are not able to reach them. They are also fiercely judgemental on themselves, which means they are creating a social environment which is both restrictive to them and the people around them, which often leads into areas of isolation. Being gifted does include some personality changes, which often leads to eccentric behaviour on their part as well, which explains why some members of society view them as irregular. These are some principles of intellectual giftedness - useful information to get you started on the subject.

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