Disabilities, Gifted

Identification

There are several issues of breadth and accuracy involved in the adequate identification of the relatively large gifted-disabled population, however. These issues are present whether these students' assessments begin with the known “gift” or the “disability.” Private practitioners with the disabled, such as psychologists or physicians, may diagnose twice-exceptional pupils with more sweeping definitions of “disability” than those guidelines utilized by school system personnel. For instance, some private psychologists who view the term disability broadly may adhere to a learning disability (LD) definition that includes a student's mere letter reversals as evidence of LD, rather than a more school-based LD definition that requires many additional, acute, intrinsic, memory or organizational problems in reading. Students with very visible disabilities, such as those who use a wheelchair, hearing aids, or Seeing Eye dog, may be so stigmatized or stereotyped by their disability status that their giftedness goes unrecognized. Gifted students with cerebral palsy or other forms of neurological disorders may have such a difficult time with communication that extraordinary talents are hidden and ignored; nevertheless, the world's greatest physicist, Stephen Hawking, and many extraordinary writers, artists, and musicians transcended serious, visible physical disabilities.

School-based assessors, such as school psychologists, may need to meet more stringent, institutionally based criteria than private psychologists do in identifying these twice-exceptional children as disabled. By U.S. federal and many state education definitions, a true LD student, for example, is supposed to display a significant difference between average-range-or-above potential and actual achievement in one or more school subjects due to the aforementioned innate perceptual, memory, or organization challenges. In practice, however, gifted students may not be labeled “LD” in some school districts because these students' wide gaps are not between simply average-range intellect and subaverage achievement—the gaps expected by many school systems—but between high intellect and average achievement (a far less pressing problem in the eyes of many school systems).

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