Cognitive Profile of Intellectually Gifted Adults: Analyzing the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale

Abstract

The Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS) has been used extensively to study intellectual abilities of special groups. Here, we report the results of an intellectually gifted group on the WAIS-IV. Gifted individuals are people who obtained scores equal to or greater than 2 standard deviations above the mean on an intelligence test. Hence, the current study aims first, to examine mean group performance data of gifted individuals on the WAIS-IV; second, to revalidate the pattern of performance identified in this special group in previous studies (i.e., verbal skills higher than all other abilities); third, to compare scatter measures across intellectual domains with a matched comparison group. A total of 130 gifted individuals (79 males) were administered the full battery and their performance was compared with a matched comparison group. Analyses revealed that gifted group displayed higher scores in all intellectual domains. Contrary to expectations, they showed the highest scores in perceptual reasoning tasks. A multivariate approach revealed that this ability was statistically different from all other domains within the gifted group. Moreover, gifted individuals showed higher discrepancies across intellectual domains than average-intelligence people. Findings have important practical implications to detect intellectual giftedness in adulthood.

Crisis of Meaning and Subjective Well-Being: The Mediating Role of Resilience and Self-Control among Gifted Adults

“…The HIQ group reported, as expected in hypothesis 1, higher crisis of meaning and lower self-control than the HAA group. These results are in line with findings of scholars who suggested existential troubles [14,23], lower psychosocial adjustment among the HIQ [25][26][27][28][29], and group differences between HIQ and HAA [14,23].…”

“…This is particularly alarming when considering that intellectually gifted adults' meaning in life predicted their subjective well-being in a longitudinal study [24]. A broad body of studies with intellectually gifted persons suggests a similar tendency for psychosocial issues, such as a vulnerability for affective disorders and immune-related diseases [25], identity problems, compulsivity [26], a low sense of coherence [27], a fearful attachment style [28], and the perception of being different [29].…”

Psychological Framework for Gifted Children’s Cognitive and Socio-Emotional Development: A Review of the Research Literature and Implications

“…First, it provided a developmental perspective to better understand the cognitive growth of gifted individuals. The gifted display precocious and advanced cognitive development in perceptual reasoning, abstract thinking, and conscious awareness, which influences their future academic performance, motivation for learning and self-development, and commitment in specific interest domains (Jung & Worrell, 2017;Lang, Matta, Parolin, Morrone, & Pezzuti, 2017;Silverman, 2018). Furthermore, this review reveals that although gifted children reach the Piagetian stages earlier and move through them at an accelerated pace, the association between IQ and Piagetian tasks becomes more important as children mature (Berninger & Yates, 1993).…”

“…However, despite the fact that some studies considering the results of traditional IQ testing have reported that the gifted display better performance in the domains of working memory (WM) and speed of processing (SP) than typically developing children, findings remain mixed. In fact, it has been suggested that the gifted display a weakness with regard to solving SP tasks speedily (Lang, Matta, Parolin, Morrone, & Pezzuti, 2017). Taken together, these results demonstrate that gifted children perceive an unusual quantity of information from the environment as a result of heightened sensory awareness, suggesting a link between giftedness and perceptual superiority (Hindal, 2014), which may be one of the factors leading to recognizing as gifted those children with a visual-spatial approach to thinking (Silverman, 2000).…”

Identificação de Estudantes com Altas Habilidades/Superdotação no Ensino Superior1

“…On the one hand, regarding the male gender being more prevalent, research shows a greater number of male students, one of the possible hypotheses for this phenomenon being a view historically permeated by prejudices, mainly related to the education of women (Gontijo, 2007;Lang, Matta , Parolin, Morrone, & Pezzuti, 2017;Tentes & Fleith, 2014). On the other hand, Pedro et al (2016) state that, for social reasons, the experience of giftedness in women is given differently, since cultural values regarding intelligence need to be considered and questioned.…”