Definition
We speak of giftedness when a person’s intellectual grasp, ability to combine and remember are so great that they are superior to the average person. Giftedness in adulthood occurs in about 2-3% of cases, although it must be said that over 80% of the giftedness diagnosed in adulthood was already detected in youth or as a child. Most of the time, children stand out in school by following lessons with disinterest, but still writing outstanding grades.
In some cases, however, giftedness can also manifest itself in such a way that children are underchallenged in school lessons, drift off in their thoughts and then also write poor grades. In this case, giftedness is extremely difficult to diagnose and is usually overlooked. Giftedness is not an illness, it is a skill that needs to be intensively promoted.
Test your high aptitude
The test for giftedness can be performed from the age of 3 years. Giftedness is often associated with the term “intelligence quotient” and in fact there seems to be a connection between giftedness in the conventional sense and the IQ determined by psychological testing. However, it should not be forgotten in this context that giftedness is much more than knowing historical data and having general educational information at hand.
Giftedness also means recognizing and assessing problems at an early stage, establishing connections and building social skills. These components are not included in the classic IQ test. There is an indication that a certain level of giftedness can also be inherited.
It was found that giftedness is much more common in children when relatives such as aunt or uncle already had this gift. Whether and to what extent giftedness is developed and developed in a child depends on the early recognition and promotion of the child. One speaks of giftedness when a psychological test shows an intelligence quotient of at least 130.
In Germany, this is about 400,000 children and 1.8 million adults, who are thus classified as highly gifted. 10% of all people are considered to be above average intelligent. They achieve an IQ result of 120 in the tests.
In the case of highly gifted adults, a distinction is made between different areas. For example, mathematical abilities can be more pronounced than linguistic ones. The fact that someone is highly gifted does not mean that they would achieve outstanding performance in all areas.
To diagnose giftedness, a number of tests have become established today that vary in their structure depending on age. In comparison to average intelligence tests, the level of difficulty of high ability tests is such that high ability can be determined relatively reliably by making optimum use of the test range. Three tests have so far become established for testing giftedness and are used today as special diagnostic tests: These tests, which consist of different sections, cover the points of retentiveness, ingenuity and speed of performance as well as handling numerical and verbal materials.
In total, the test consists of 45 different task groups. The test can be administered as a short form or long form, whereby the longer version has a higher test accuracy. The test should be taken together with a psychologist. The BIS HB is based on a random sample of 500 highly gifted individuals and is therefore ideally suited for determining giftedness.
- MHBT-P test for elementary school
- MHBT-S for secondary school
- BIS HB Test
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