Neurodevelopmental Variation as a Framework for Thinking About the Twice Exceptional

Abstract

Developmental exceptionalities span the range of learning abilities and encompass children with both learning disorders and learning gifts. The purpose of this article is to stimulate thinking about these exceptionalities, particularly the complexities and variations within and across people. Investigators tend to view learning disabilities or abilities, and gifts or high-end exceptionalities, as if they were necessarily and completely independent. This approach has led many in the field to look upon only limited aspects of the exceptional child, culminating in an inability to resolve the great variation and covariation that exists within and across children. Although there are a number of cognitive differences models that correctly advocate for an appreciation of profiles of strengths and weaknesses in the exceptional child, there remains a need for a neuroscientific approach that can help us better understand and accommodate the twice-exceptional individual—one with developmental disorders but also with high skills in the talent, creativity, or intellectual domains. We propose a model that will help us to fully appreciate that the brain that produces developmental learning abilities across the spectrum must be viewed as an integrated and multifaceted organ that is more than a simple reflection of its separate parts or domain-specific symptoms. We use developmental reading disability or dyslexia and the twice-exceptional individual as a means to illustrate how this model can aid in our thinking about these conditions.

Notes

¹In this article we focus on reading disability as our example learning disorder. This is because of our familiarity with the disorder as well as the fact that it is perhaps the most common and well-studied disorder in the current learning disability classification scheme (Fletcher et al., 2007). Furthermore, while our focus is on the twice-exceptional RD individual, much of what we say may be incorporated into research and practice in the area of pure giftedness as well.

²It is important to note that when we speak of the twice exceptional in this article we are not including conditions like the rare and talented autistic, savant, or prodigy (Butterworth, 2001; Casanova, Buxhoeveden, Switala, & Roy, 2002; Deutsch & Joseph, 2003). Instead, we are addressing the developmentally intact and normal child, who has a specific learning disorder along with a superior splinter skill or IQ in the “gifted” range.

3At the time of this writing it is noteworthy that the National Institute of Child Health and Development (NICHD) has begun to consider the issue of TE more formally and from this may come some important funding initiatives. See also the American Psychological Foundation (www.apa.org) and the Templeton Foundation (www.templeton.org) for some other nonfederal funding mechanisms in this area.

⁴Broader definitions of poor reading that do not require a significant discrepancy with nonreading abilities may yield prevalences as high as 20% or more, and in other linguistic populations where written language is more phonetically consistent than English, such as Italian, the frequency of RD can be significantly lower (Paulesu et al., 2001).

⁵While this article focuses on early, prenatal neurodevelopment, there is accumulating evidence that postnatal neurodevelopment also is important to the expression and course of LD.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jeffrey W. Gilger

Portions of this manuscript were presented at the 2004 annual meeting of the International Dyslexia Association; in Smith & Gilger (2007), Gilger and Wilkins (2008), and in Gilger & Kaplan (2008). Special thanks to Bonnie Kaplan for her contributions to some of the ideas in this article. Funded in part by an APA Foundation Grant, the Esther Katz Rosen Grant for Research and Programs on Giftedness in Children, 2006–2007 (Gilger, PI).