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1)  Steve, you have recently edited a book about gifted kids. Could you tell us a bit about it?

Very recently, Springer published the Handbook of Giftedness in Children: Psycho-educational Theory, Research and Best Practices. I was privileged to be invited to edit this handbook. The book brings together leading authorities from the fields of psychology and education, who share their expertise on topics such as different models of conceptualizing giftedness, developmental and social considerations in understanding giftedness, alternative approaches to screening and identification, the role of the family and school in talent development, early career counseling and planning, and working therapeutically with the gifted child and family when things go awry. Many wonderful authors contributed to the handbook, including well-known figures in the gifted field such as Nancy Robinson, Sylvia Rimm, Maureen Neihart, Linda Silverman, Sally Reis, Joyce Van Tassel-Baska, Jane Piirto, Robert Sternberg, and one of my professors from my graduate school days, James Gallagher.

Interestingly enough, I am now working on authoring a book specifically for school psychologists and other school-based practitioners entitled Serving the Gifted: Evidence-Based Clinical and Psycho-Educational Practice. The book will be published by Routledge, for their newly launched "School-Based Practice in Action Series." What makes this new project particularly exciting is that the book is designed to provide school-based practitioners with concise, practical and evidence-based information to better serve gifted students.

2)  You have an article appearing in a peer reviewed journal entitled "The Gifted: Clinical Challenges and Practice Opportunities for Child Psychiatry" What kinds of issues do you discuss?

Recently, I was invited to write an article for the medical journal published by the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. I was both honored and humbled by the invitation. I saw this invitation as a unique opportunity to share with members of the Academy what we know about the gifted, with particular attention to how their emotional needs often are misunderstood and, as a result, unmet. Child and adolescent psychiatrists rarely, if ever, are provided during their residency and fellowship training exposure to the social and emotional needs of gifted children. And yet we know that some gifted children, like their non-gifted peers, experience very real and painful social and emotional problems. In addition, we are aware that gifted children are often misdiagnosed or missed diagnosed because of misconceptions and misunderstandings about giftedness. This is the thrust of the article.

The article provides information on what we know about the unique characteristics of gifted children, challenges in identifying gifted children with psychological problems – the twice exceptional, and how characteristics typical of some gifted, such as asynchronous development, perfectionism, hyper-sensitivities, can create unique difficulties that child psychiatrists need to be aware of. The article is now undergoing a second round of reviews by the Editorial Board. I am hopeful that it will soon be officially accepted for publication and available to child and adolescent psychiatrists nationwide.

3)  You have also developed a rating scale. Could you tell us about this scale and how it is used?

In 2003 a colleague, Tania Jarosewich, and I coauthored a new teacher rating scale to help identify gifted children, the Gifted Rating Scales (GRS). The test is published by Pearson and has been very well-received by practitioners and school districts nationwide. The GRS consists of two forms, a rating scale for preschool and kindergarten children and a form for students in grades 1-8. Both forms consist of six scales, 5 gifted scales and a scale which measures a student's motivation, persistence or drive-not a type of giftedness but nonetheless very important to assess in understanding a student's academic competence.

The GRS is being used in the schools in two ways. Some school districts are using it as part of a gifted identification battery, typically in conjunction with scores on an IQ test and a review of classroom performance. Other school districts are using it as a stand-alone screening tool, an inexpensive and easy-to-use front-line vetting procedure to select students for more close and comprehensive gifted evaluation. We are delighted that there is a growing body of research in peer-review journals which provides support for the validity of its use in both ways. Perhaps the two things that we have been most pleased and gratified to find is that the GRS does a very good job of identifying children with exceptional intellectual and academic ability, and that the GRS has identified otherwise bright and highly able students who don't test well on an IQ test.

4)  We have a number of Intelligence Tests available- the Wechsler Scales, the Stanford Binet 5, the K-ABC-II, and the Reynolds. Could you indicate which of these is the best test for measuring giftedness or do they each have strengths and weaknesses?

Each of the ability tests that you mention are reputable and have their unique strong points and value as diagnostic measures. During test development, my Gifted Rating Scales was intentionally co-normed along with the Wechsler Scales, so of course I am most familiar with the WISC-IV. The Wechsler Scales and Stanford Binet are the two most widely IQ tests for gifted identification. That said, the newly revised Kaufman Scales, the Cognitive Abilities Test, the Reynolds test, along with a host of other well-designed ability tests, including non-verbal measures, are used in gifted identification nationwide.

Our research group at Florida State is presently conducting a national survey of members of the National Association of School Psychologists to determine how frequently different tests and measures are being used in gifted identification across the country. We hope to be able to report our findings by summer 2009.

Which is the best test for measuring giftedness is not a simple or easy question to answer!

Part of the problem in answering this question is that the gifted field hasn't reached consensus on how exactly to define giftedness. Without a consensually agreed-upon definition, it becomes impossible to compare the diagnostic accuracy of different tests or procedures. This dilemma is really no different from what is seen in other related fields, for example the lack of consensus among authorities and practitioners in how to conceptualize (and define) disorders such as learning disabilities, autism spectrum disorder or ADHD. What I do believe and feel strongly about is that no one test, measure or procedure should ever be used alone in making important educational or classification decisions. We should always look for confirmation from multiple measures.

5)  How would your rating scale be used IN CONJUCTION with one of the tests above to determine giftedness?

As I suggested above, the Gifted Rating Scale is often used in the schools in conjunction with an IQ test in identifying gifted students for special programs or resources in the schools. The GRS provides useful confirmatory evidence when used as a companion to scores obtained on an IQ or ability test. The GRS is based on teacher judgment and observations of student classroom behavior, whereas an IQ test is based on a student's performance on a structured and systematized set of cognitive tasks. They provide different but complementary perspectives and lenses through which to view a youngster's intellectual and academic competence. IQ tests are not infallible and are not perfect measures of intellectual competence. For any number of reasons, some otherwise bright and capable students simply don't test well on IQ tests (and other measures of ability, such as the college admissions SAT or ACT tests). Oftentimes the GRS will pick up a highly capable student with a score on an IQ test that does not necessarily accurately represent her potential. This occurs because teachers can observe in the classroom the spark of advanced reasoning skills and problem solving, ability to understand complex information and abstract ideas, even when not demonstrated by a student on an IQ test. When we find this, we seek further confirmatory – or dis-confirmatory evidence to support a classification of gifted.

6) We have all heard horror stories about a child who does well in school, is referred for testing, is given an I.Q. test by a competent professional and then ends up with a Full Scale I.Q. of 127. What should be done in these instances?

A score on an IQ test is an estimate of a person's 'true' intellectual ability, really an abstraction and not something that is real. Any score on any test is at best an estimate of a hypothetical true score. Theoretically, you could test a child ten times using the same IQ test, and if fatigue and practice effects did not influence the outcome of each testing, you would most likely obtain a range of obtained scores, not the same score each time.

In the example that you cite, the ten scores that you obtain might range from, say, 119 to 134. And then you'd ask, Well, what is the child's 'true' IQ score! This is an issue that psychologists and educators face when interpreting test scores, the fact that no test score is perfect or without error, that every score is at best an estimate of a hypothetical true score, of which we can only make a reasoned guess.

A second issue that further complicates the issue you pose is that there really is no cut-score that divides giftedness from not-giftedness. Even if we were to agree to define giftedness as someone with a high IQ score, which I don't espouse or believe, we'd still be left with the problem of where to draw the line between high-enough IQ score to be considered gifted! Although many would like to believe otherwise, a person with an obtained score of 130 on an IQ test may be in no way more intellectually capable or promising than a person with an obtained score of 127 (or even 120).

The cut-off score of 130, used by many, but not all, school districts across the U.S.) is essentially an administrative policy decision. Clearly, youngsters who test at or above 130 on IQ tests are bright and capable and tend to do well in academic arenas! But so do most youngsters who test at 127! The real issue in the gifted field, in my opinion, is identifying those students who are intellectually and academically precocious and not being appropriately challenged in their present classroom environments. These are the students who need and will most benefit from gifted programs and services!

7)  Could you tell us a bit about your work with SENG? (Supporting the Emotional Needs of Giftedness)

SENG is a very special and unique gifted organization which provides support to gifted individuals, their families, and professionals who work with them, specifically focused on the unique social and emotional needs of gifted persons. SENG has carved out an important niche within the gifted field that is too often neglected. Jim Webb, psychologist, president of Great Potential Press, and noted authority on the emotional needs of the gifted, helped launch SENG twenty five years ago.SENG's programs and services include an informational website, free monthly newsletter, an annual conference held in the summer (this July in Orlando), parent groups, Webinars, and continuing education.

As a Board member, I am involved with multiple aspects of SENG's work, including serving as chair of SENG's continuing education committee. Our continuing education efforts include offering CE courses for mental health professionals, both online and at our summer conference. I encourage the interested reader to visit the SENG website to see the many resources available to parents, educators, and mental health providers!

8)  What are you currently researching/working on writing?

My research team and I have been focusing on four areas of investigation within the gifted field. First, we continue to design and implement studies examining the validity and practical usefulness of the Gifted Rating Scales (GRS). These GRS test validity research studies have been far-reaching, both geographically and conceptually! For example, members of our research team at Florida State have translated the GRS into Turkish, Chinese, Korean and Spanish and actually conducted cross-cultural, international validation studies across the globe! This research has yielded exciting and important findings. We have been able to confirm that the 6-factor structure of the GRS (5 gifted scales and a motivation scale) makes sense, statistically as well as conceptually, in all of the countries in which we've conducted our research. We've also provided strong support for the validity and usefulness of the translated versions of the GRS in these countries. This is an important practical finding within the gifted field, since many countries simply don't have the financial resources to administer individual IQ tests for gifted identification.

A second area of investigation has looked at how character strengths and virtues, such as wisdom, curiosity, love of learning, generosity, emotional intelligence, and humility, might relate, if at all, to children of high intellectual ability. We are in the very preliminary stage of our work within this exciting area, and we are optimistic that it may well lead to interesting and important new insights.

A third area of research at Florida State is looking at relationships between select personality constructs and intellectual competence. We start from the premise that general intellectual ability or g is a well-documented psychological construct and has been shown to predict to important academic, vocational, and life outcomes. We are building upon this foundation in exploring how personality and motivational constructs might further explain academic success and career choices among highly competent students.

One interesting line of research that we've begun to explore is the construct of grit, which we view as a person's perseverance or motivation, in conjunction with their inherent passion for what they're working on. A person can be motivated without the passion, and a person can have passion but without the drive. We theorize that the combination of both predict to especially successful life outcomes for gifted learners.

9) What question have I neglected to ask?

Your eight questions covered a lot of territory! I guess you neglected to ask me my opinion on what the future holds for our country with a new president and administration taking office. You neglected to ask me if I envision breakthroughs in the war on terrorism, global warming, or the continuing disregard for our fragile eco-environment. You neglected to ask me if I think there is even the possibility of a resolution to the Middle East crisis or a tamping-down of the many ethnic, religious and tribal hostilities raging across our globe. You neglected to ask me if my New York Yankees stand a better chance of making the World Series in 2009 or if Florida State University's football team will regain the pre-eminent status it held in the 1990s. These are a few of the many questions you neglected to ask! Thankfully! For I have little if any expertise, although many opinions like most, on these topics. Thank you for the interview!

Published January 20, 2009