The 5 types of intellectual giftedness

Human intelligence is the capacity that allows a person to learn, understand, reason and make decisions in relation to what surrounds him. When these capacities are innately superior to those of other people, we can speak of giftedness..

Gifted people are those who enjoy superior intelligence, remarkable creativity, and extreme curiosity. All this turns these people into beings with special needs and demands, being of great importance, in the case of children, specialized professional guidance.

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What is giftedness?

The term intellectual giftedness refers to those people with superior intellectual abilities in comparison with the average capacities that determine the various tests of assessment of the coefficient intellectual. Specifically, the World Health Organization (WHO) establishes that A gifted person is one who has an IQ greater than 130 points..

Likewise, a difference must be made between giftedness and a person with notable specific abilities, since the former is considered as innate and it is not possible to achieve it through practice and the second is achieved through teaching and/or repetition.

However, giftedness does not have to be at a general level, it can occur in a specific field of knowledge. A person can be born with special aptitudes or gifts for music but not for mathematics.

model of the three rings

Gifted specialist Joseph Renzulli (1936) developed a model called the Three Rings Model, in which examines the particularities that a gifted child or person should have to be distinguished as such.

According to this model, a gifted person must possess a perfect and balanced combination of these three qualities:

• high intelligence: the person must have high capacities in terms of their information processing system.
• Creativity: Must be a creative person with divergent thinking.
• Involvement in the tasks: the person must be sufficiently motivated to ensure the success of her potential.

types of giftedness

Within the framework of Spanish legislation, specifically in the Management of Students with Special Educational Needs, the existence of different types of giftedness is distinguished.

This distinction is made based on whether the person is creatively gifted or gifted with a high IQ.

1. creative giftedness

People credited with creative giftedness are characterized by a hyperdeveloped sense of humor, and a playful disposition that is extrapolated to all areas of your life.

Usually, professionals find it very difficult to recognize this type of giftedness, since traditional intelligence tests are not useful for it. However, there is a little-known test to evaluate people with these types of abilities and it is The Torrance Test of Creative Thinking (TTTC).

The traits examined in this test are:

• Originality
• Fluency in ideas
• Elaboration
• Sense of humor
• Vision of unusual perspectives
• richness in the imagination
• imaginative quality
• closing resistance
• abstraction of titles
• Ability to prolong or break joints of complete forms

2. Gifted with high IQ

People with an IQ score above 140 points They are considered to be people with high general intelligence. But within this category three groups can be distinguished:

2.1. Gifted from a privileged background with an IQ of around 140

These people understand teaching as something playful. In children, they are able to keep their minds active and attentive for much longer than the rest of their peers. They have an intelligence closer to average. They are able to sustain their activity for longer and tend to have fewer hours of sleep than usual.

Regarding personality traits, they tend to be confident and nonconformist, and show very critical attitudes compared to other children, sometimes even overestimating themselves.

In addition, they enjoy a great talent for solving problems, as well as a high capacity for reaction and endurance in tense or stressful situations. Although, occasionally, they fail when it comes to their sensitivity due to the high valuation of themselves and their self-confidence.

2.2. Gifted with limited economic resources

Unlike the previous ones, gifted people but with limited financial resources have considerable emotional sensitivity, to the point of self-incrimination for possessing abilities at a much higher level than his peers.

This emotional sensitivity makes them much nicer to their peers and develop a great sense of friendship. In addition, they usually feel the need to make a good impression and please as many people as possible.

For all this, they tend to be highly valued by peers and teachers, and they tend to end up being the group leaders but without presenting positions of authority or dominance. Likewise, they are characterized by being more conformist and less spontaneous, having a much higher integration of norms and rules.

Gifted people raised in low-resource contexts have a great fear of failure, so they usually don't have to take too many risks. In children, they are usually much more aware of the reality that surrounds them, this vision can be reflected in different areas:

• high regard for school and the different means of learning
• Learn in an articulate way, relating all theories with the context that surrounds them
• Tasks, occupations and less childish interests.

23. Gifted with extreme precocity

The third subgroup of this category is made up of those people who together with their giftedness have some type of severe personality disorder, which in most cases appears as schizophrenia.

These people take refuge in occupations and intellectual hobbies that separate them from psychosis and help them to simulate an ordinary way of life, it can be said that it is a defense mechanism in the form of regulating therapy.

During the childhood stage, these children have great obstacles to maintain any type of relationship with their peers, for which, generally, they end up being marginalized by their peers, reaching the point of suffering from some disorder affective.

In addition, they are capable of relating everything they have learned to reality, sometimes presenting strange behaviors and abrupt and unexpected reactions. This ability to understand leads them not to tolerate certain behaviors, and being aware of their high capacities, they respond aggressively and bitingly.

Despite this, they enjoy a significant speed for learning, as well as outstanding communication skills, being the elaborate and concise speech very characteristic of these people.