The diagnosis of giftedness is a long process that can be monitored by competent persons: parents, family doctors, therapists, and social workers. The identification of such children is also carried out by family psychologists, teachers and educators of school and preschool institutions. Methods for diagnosing gifted personality are selected individually. They depend on the creative successes of the child, his abilities to perform mathematical actions and on behavior in society. However, the talents of little geniuses have nothing to do with their behavior, just like mental abilities are not related to the performance of complex tasks or the solution of questions posed.
Methods for identifying special abilities in a child
The most harmless and effective way to identify special opportunities in children is observation, which can not do without an experiment. This should not scare parents, since the process is related to the game theme, conducting classes with a specific bias. The baby becomes the object of study - it can be a baby, a schoolboy or a child visiting the garden. A gifted person at any age expresses himself differently than "simple" children.
Analysis and experimental observation technique
Obtaining a holistic characteristic is indispensable in this matter. It helps to establish the degree of ability to behave in society, interact with other children:
- Longitudinal research is a borrowed English word for long-term action. It is noteworthy that all observations occur in a natural environment, and not when the baby is asked to do something for candy or a different promotion. This method allows you to objectively accept things and situations.
- Individual longitudinality is a combined characteristic, which is obtained from information for specified periods. If in the first case we are talking about many years of experience and observation, then in the second it is enough to choose a few weeks a year to observe the child. It turns out the picture in the "context": before and after observation for a specific period.
The second diagnostic method can be compared with training people. For example, you went to a driving school, and on the exam showed not very good results, despite the fact that in a natural environment, drive pretty well. Here we are talking about giftedness in terms of academic performance of "grasping" information and applying knowledge in practice. In difficult psychological conditions (exam), abilities are blocked due to superior emotions of fear.
Diagnostics why you need
Diagnosing giftedness is not the ultimate goal. This is an intermediate point, after which the line is set for the child: these are opportunities in communicating with peers, and the ability to absorb new knowledge. If the baby is very smart, he is checked for dysynchrony in the development of the brain, as it is believed that some mental abilities are the result of developmental abnormalities.
Nonverbal study
Diagnosis of the giftedness of primary schoolchildren is carried out by means of non-verbal communication techniques, when the conversations are still tiring and not able to reveal the child’s location and trust in adults. An integrated approach is important here:
- Observe how a child behaves in a team game.
- Watch his behavior during psychological trainings.
- Take into account the expert assessment of the child given by parents and carers.
- Conduct trial lessons on special programs.
- Create technically complex models: drawing, the technical structure of machines, composing poems, etc.
Also, attention should be paid to participation in olympiads, intellectual games, conferences, sports competitions, festivals. This is not a method for diagnosing giftedness, but it helps to identify some features in the work of the brain.
Psychodiagnostic research
To reduce the likelihood of error, the criteria should include positive and negative points. The values ​​of each indicators will indicate the degree of that side of giftedness, which manifests itself to a greater extent.
- Psychodiagnostic techniques and diagnostics of giftedness cannot indicate the presence of abilities if the criteria are completely positive.
- Also, one cannot talk about the lack of giftedness if the criterion is negatively traced everywhere.
High or low values ​​are not proof of a child’s ability or lack of any specific skills. That is why it is important to competently understand issues of personal growth and development.
What affects psychometric data
There are a number of factors that must be considered when evaluating a child’s abilities. It:
- Degree of creativity.
- Inborn abilities, for example, the ability to draw beautifully.
- Cognitive position of the child (desire to learn).
- The specific intensity of the thought process.
In psychodiagnostic practice, too high indicators can indicate neurotization, a violation of the selectivity of thought, a desire to achieve more for the sake of quantity rather than quality. This is caused by psychological protection, when in a family a child is forced, not motivated, to study.
General principles for the diagnosis of creativity in children
Diagnosis of creative giftedness is relative, as the baby is observed by the degree of involvement in creative thinking. Thus, several types of assessments are distinguished:
- Productivity Index is the aggregate of the number of responses to the number of tasks.
- The degree of originality is the sum of the originality indices of individual answers in relation to their total number.
- The uniqueness of the answers is their number in relation to the total number of answers.
In the first case, it is about collecting data regarding the questions asked. The last two methods show and display a certain parallel between the "special" and general answers.
A selection of creative abilities according to the methods of the scientific school of D. Guildford and Torrens
John Guilford defined a certain pattern when he tried to distinguish between several types of memory and types of mental operations: convergence and divergence.
- The diagnosis of giftedness begins with convergence, when the brain is updated. For example, when solving a problem, you need to find one solution. This is the same as the identity of the IQ test solution.
- Divergent thinking can be diagnosed, but not quickly. Thinking occurs in different directions: variation of answers, solutions, jumps, several correct answers, multiple results.
The latter gives rise to unusualness, which equates to originality. This is one of the directions in the diagnosis of gifted children. Creativity is judged by the latest type of thinking. Therefore, the mental abilities tested by IQ tests cannot be applied to the identification of creativity, to the assessment of creative abilities, since a child with convergent thinking will quickly find a single right solution, and a baby with divergent thinking will be prone to diversity, which requires more time initially.
Options for setting the degree of creativity
This indicator is a certain feature of a person, which allows him to move away from stereotypes and rules. Sometimes these individuals are called indigo children. The degree of giftedness will never be associated with the country of residence, innate talents, DNA chromosomes and other biological and physical characteristics.
Techniques for the diagnosis of giftedness reveal the installation:
- Verbal - verbal thinking, the ability to speak talentfully, make speech smoothly, and master oratory.
- Non-verbal - visual creative thinking, which shows how talented a person is “inside” his world.
This separation is justified by intelligence factors. There is figurative and verbal - that we can imagine, but are not able to express in words. “Not an artist” - cannot literally describe something until he outlines the statement of the problem verbally. The video below shows what should be highlighted when it comes to the concept of "gifted baby."
Testing scope
Nowadays, people are accustomed to thinking so that every decision is made quickly, is one and the right one. Each implies a previous process in which a person has already chosen associations, used patterns and phrases from stereotypes. It is unreasonable to measure the creativity of such a person, since her ability to think against the rules has been lost.
There are no multiple solutions for office workers. The client needs to give a single correct, which will be satisfactory for him. This is required to be done at high speed. Only after a day the office worker will be able to come up with the best option. What is wrong with the parameters of creativity? Why do they “sleep” when they should help a person in stressful situations?
Creativity parameters relative to the distance from realities
Guildford identified in children only 6 options for different creativity of thinking. Despite his young age, he was not mistaken, since testing in an experimental form was then carried out again after ten years. We checked out the verification results in the table:
| Abilities | Junior classes | Middle classes | High school students |
| Problem detection and identification | Truth is born in a dispute. Children easily coped with the task when they began to contradict each other. | Teenagers could not cooperate. Everyone wanted to give his answer as correct, not wanting to listen to others. | They gave several answers, suggesting that there are correct ones that indicate the causes of the problem, which was required from the students. A group of subjects coped with the statement of the problem. |
| Generation of ideas or solutions to a problem | Children gave a wide variety of answers, each of which was to a small extent suitable for the task. By virtue of age, the responses were regarded as optimal. | The middle classes offered few options, but they all agreed on the most “best” answer, not wanting to think anymore. | In high school, students offered several answers that were regarded as true. |
| Flexibility and originality. | The simplest answers were really correct, but in unusual situations, the children answered as if the problem was the main thing in their life. | In adolescence, the subconscious mind weakens, especially the instinct of self-preservation. However, the students were able to approach the sample of answers in an original way, without giving a single correct answer. | The diagnosis of children's giftedness among high school students was successful: the generation of ideas was high, the production of different answers also took place. |
During the testing process, it was also proposed to respond adequately to the situation when it was necessary to cope with the stimulus. It consisted in the impossibility of solving the problem in a simple way (it was necessary to look for other options, apply divergent thinking).
D. Guilford noted that with age, a person loses the ability to distinguish simple from cunning, complex from unsolvable. Children who took tasks for the game did the test. Adults, imposing the complexity of the trials on themselves according to the template, could not cope at all, but sometimes they tried to "get out" of an awkward and unusual environment (act not quickly, but multifaceted).
Test "ARP" to establish divergent thinking
The diagnosis of a schoolchildren’s giftedness is revealed by conducting a special test, which was developed by Guildford. The bottom line is the usage and image of the subject. Children were asked to do the following:
- Write words that contain the letter "K" or "O".
- Write ways to use the selected item.
- Draw objects using specific geometric shapes of different sizes.
Each test has subtests that are used to diagnose the development of giftedness in senior and middle grades. Torrance pointed out that the most logical and ideal test should measure the process of all stages. However, in reality, he could not project the idea, therefore, he added a figurative-sound parameter of assessment to the main test of Guildford.
The reliability of the Torrens tests is great: from 0.7 to 0.9 points on a scale of 1 point. He asked students to associate sounds annoying humans with animals. Guilford appreciated the originality of the responses. Together, science has received the optimal solution for how to test and find a creative student who can be considered gifted.
The methods are divided into different levels of difficulty: for babies they use only a non-verbal testing model, for adults - both options. Diagnosing the giftedness of preschoolers helps to establish the child’s abilities in early childhood, and prepare a high school student for exams at the university and choice of profession.