2017/09/26 by Margherita Lang, Michael Matta, Laura Parolin +2 · 2 citations
Medicine · Psychology · #Borderline intellectual functioning #Clinical psychology #Cognition #Cognitive Abilities and Testing #Developmental psychology #Education, Achievement, and Giftedness #Fluid and crystallized intelligence #Fluid intelligence #Hormonal Regulation and Hypertension #Intellectual ability #Intellectual disability #Intelligence quotient #Psychiatry #Psychology #Test (biology) #Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale #Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children #Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence #Working memory
paper · doi:10.1177/1073191117733547
openalex publication_date 2017/09/26 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/22
The Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS) has been used extensively to study intellectual abilities of special groups. Here, we report the results of an intellectually gifted group on the WAIS-IV. Gifted individuals are people who obtained scores equal to or greater than 2 standard deviations above the mean on an intelligence test. Hence, the current study aims first, to examine mean group performance data of gifted individuals on the WAIS-IV; second, to revalidate the pattern of performance identified in this special group in previous studies (i.e., verbal skills higher than all other abilities); third, to compare scatter measures across intellectual domains with a matched comparison group. A total of 130 gifted individuals (79 males) were administered the full battery and their performance was compared with a matched comparison group. Analyses revealed that gifted group displayed higher scores in all intellectual domains. Contrary to expectations, they showed the highest scores in perceptual reasoning tasks. A multivariate approach revealed that this ability was statistically different from all other domains within the gifted group. Moreover, gifted individuals showed higher discrepancies across intellectual domains than average-intelligence people. Findings have important practical implications to detect intellectual giftedness in adulthood.