Empirical Investigation of Twice-Exceptionality: Where Have We Been and Where Are We Going?

Abstract

Gifted students with coexisting disabilities, also known as twice-exceptional, are increasingly recognized in America’s schools. This increasing awareness needs to be met with equal enthusiasm for empirical investigation into the identification and treatment needs of this group of students. In this article, a 20-year review of the empirical literature examining twice-exceptionality, specifically gifted students with learning disabilities, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or autism spectrum disorder, was conducted. Research strongly suggests that gifted students can have a coexisting disability and that comprehensive, individualized approaches toward diagnosis are necessary. Less is known about effective treatments and interventions that simultaneously highlight strengths and accommodate for areas of growth. Future research directions are offered that ideally will encourage scholars to discover more about effective diagnostic and intervention techniques for this very important group of gifted learners. Putting the Research to Use The purpose of this article is to provide a comprehensive summary of the last 20 years of empirical research examining gifted students with specific learning disabilities, Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, or autism spectrum disorders. Scholars can extrapolate from this summary a research agenda that will move the field forward in the pursuit of empirically validated identification and intervention techniques with twice-exceptional learners. Educators are encouraged to use this information when developing gifted identification protocols in schools, accommodation plans for twice-exceptional students, and interventions that target specific strength and growth areas. Finally, parents of twice-exceptional learners can reference the empirical studies summarized as they search for research-based approaches to helping their child.

Impact of IQ Discrepancy on Executive Function in High-Functioning Autism: Insight into Twice Exceptionality

“…In the gifted education literature, some children with HFA fall into the category 'twice exceptional' (Whitmore 1980;Fox et al 1983;Whitmore and Maker 1985), defined descriptively as the co-morbidity of high ability (characterized by a Full Scale Index Quotient (FSIQ) generally C120, due to the fact that this score is often used as a cut-off to identify children for services in gifted programs in school) and a co-morbid disability such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, dyslexia, or HFA (Kalbfleisch 2004;Kalbfleisch and Iguchi 2008). Though little is empirically known about the nature of their abilities, twice exceptional children leverage and optimize parts of their cognitive skill for intellectual and creative performance even when they suffer social and emotional impairment (Foley Nicpon et al 2011;Kalbfleisch 2004Kalbfleisch , 2009Kalbfleisch and Iguchi 2008;Kaufmann et al 2000). This pattern of co-morbidity presents an alternative to the medical model of developmental disability (Gilger and Hynd 2008), incorporating the perspective that intellectual ability not only influences cognitive performance, but also impacts the expression of disability, hence the name ''twiceexceptional''.…”

Visuo-Spatial Skills in Atypical Readers

“…While data on nonlinguistic skills remain relatively unconsidered in general definitions of RD, we argue that these abilities may be an important part of the RD and 2e-RD picture. To develop such an argument, we start by providing an overview of current definitions of RD (Lyon, Shaywitz, & Shaywitz, 2003) and 2e (Foley Nicpon, Allmon, Sieck, & Stinson, 2011), and summarize the past 40 years of research on how nonverbal visual-spatial (VS) reasoning is expressed in people with RD. While results generally suggest that RD individuals as a group do not exhibit overall superior VS abilities, there appear to be specific types of VS skills that RD individuals show strengths in, but more rigorous and systematic research is needed.…”

Needs-based Assessment of Students with (suspicion of) Intellectual Giftedness and/or an Autism Spectrum Disorder: Design of a Heuristic

“…A gifted trait like extensive verbal knowledge base, for example, might either obscure or reinforce ASD-traits such as impaired reciprocal social communication. The camouflaging effect was not empirically validated yet (Burger-Veltmeijer et al, 2011;Foley Nicpon et al, 2011a) since camouflage is hard to detect by definition. Nevertheless, this phenomenon was noticed among practitioners and in various publications on TE (e.g.…”