Neurocognitive Profiles of Children With High Intellectual Ability: A Pilot Study

Abstract

A common question among teachers of students with high intellectual ability is how to best teach this group of children. To answer this question, it is first necessary to better understand their cognitive profiles. Thus, the primary goal of this study was to examine the neurocognitive profiles of children with high intellectual ability. To do this, we used the Discrepancy Consistency Model (Naglieri, 1999), which allows researchers to detect patterns of cognitive strengths and weaknesses. One hundred forty-two children with high intellectual ability (70 females, 72 males; M_age = 127.41 months, SD = 10.76) from Grades 4, 5, and 6 were assessed on measures of general intelligence and academic achievement, as well as on measures of Planning, Attention, Simultaneous, and Successive (PASS) processes. Results showed that 54% of the sample had a PASS score that was significantly lower than that of each student’s average PASS score. Only 8% of the students had a PASS disorder (a score that was low in relation to the student’s average and below 90). Further, 4% of our sample had both a PASS disorder and an academic-skills disorder. The findings suggest that students with high intellectual ability can show variability in PASS scores that may have relevance for instructional programming and for identifying twice-exceptional children.