Learning Difficulties in Gifted Preadolescents
Sara Conforti, Marta Pallotta, e Pierluigi Zoccolotti
We describe the reading performance of six students (11-13 years of age) with cognitive giftedness but subjective perceptions of study difficulties and suspected learning disabilities. The students exhibit higher verbal and visuospatial skills than working memory and processing speed, a typical profile in developmental dyslexia. However, one aspect that characterizes them (although with large individual differences) is a very high performance in the verbal comprehension and visuo-perceptual reasoning indices of the WISC scale. Performance in reading tasks indicates some slips, although the profile does not appear consistent with that typical of Italian children with dyslexia. Students show more marked difficulties in accuracy than speed in reading passages and lists of words and nonwords. They also have greater difficulties in accurately reading nonwords than words, a finding confirmed in two different standardized tests. It is proposed that this profile indicates the activation of lexical compensation mechanisms related to their excellent general cognitive abilities, especially verbal ones. We discuss the difficulties in diagnosing specific learning disorder in the presence of high cognitive potential and their possible implications in school and clinical settings.
Keywords
Giftedness, Reading, Speed, Accuracy, Lexicon.