CONFERENCE ABSTRACTS

Presenter: Francoys Gagne

THE “REAL” NATURE OF INTELLECTUAL GIFTEDNESS

This presentation springs from a conviction that clear and focused definitions should be preferred to fuzzy and overly inclusive ones. It begins with a survey of the participants’ core imagoe of a “gifted” person. Then, the presenter discusses common definitions of giftedness, and well-known checklists of “cognitive characteristics” of gifted individuals. The goal: separate the wheat from the chaff! He then identifies which characteristics constitute the core of the intellectual giftedness concept, and which are either peripheral, or even irrelevant. This discussion leads to the proposal of a clear and operational definition of intellectual giftedness.