Asynchrony

Background

Asynchrony is a relatively new way of looking at giftedness, but it has deep historical roots. Leta Stetter Hollingworth, the foremother of gifted education, viewed giftedness as a set of complex psychological issues arising out of the disparities between children's mental and chronological ages. She established that the farther removed the child is from average in intelligence, the more pressing the adjustment problems become. Many contemporary researchers have documented that adjustment difficulties increase with IQ.

Hollingworth suggested that to have the intelligence of an adult and the emotions of a child combined in a child's body is to encounter certain difficulties. She stated that the younger the child, the greater the difficulties, and that the years between 4 and 9 are probably the most likely to be beset with problems.

Giftedness as asynchrony highlights the internal experience of the gifted, their vulnerability, the difficulties that increase with IQ, and the important role of parents, teachers, and counselors in gifted children's optimal development. The practitioners and parents who gathered to construct this new vision were deeply concerned with the emphasis on products, performance, and achievement in modern conceptions of the gifted and talented. The construct of giftedness as asynchrony builds upon the child-centered insights of Leta Hollingworth, Lev Vygotsky, Kazimierz Dabrowski, Jean-Charles Terrassier, and Annemarie Roeper. The concept of asynchrony was developed in 1991 by the Columbus Group, which created the following position statement: