Highly gifted

Highly gifted

Being highly gifted means having a disposition to be able to get to extraordinary achievements. Highly gifted is more than merely intelligence as this would only reflect a score from an intelligence test. People that are highly gifted have an IQ of more than 130 which is around 2.5% of the population. In addition to a high IQ, other personality factors like creativity and perseverance are important. The social aspects of the environment have a great influence on the development of the highly gifted person. The three most important environments are school, developing peers and family.

Asperger’s

Asperger Syndrome is a combination of higher intelligence and autism.

People with the Asperger’s Syndrome often have a very high IQ. The autism in this form is complicated as the characteristics are that these people experience emotions in a flattening way and are mostly focussed on their own experiences in a negative as well as positive manner.

For highly gifted people with Asperger’s Syndrome it is often found that these conditions in combination with the focus on themselves reinforce and preserve these conditions.

An additional problem would be that highly gifted individuals with Asperger’s are diagnosed incorrectly by the mental health authorities because behaviour and character are mixed-up and tests are being treated as the only measurement.

Besides, authorities generally do not read the highly gifted very well. They do not understand the kind of person they have in front of them and the autism/ Asperger’s Syndrome takes the precedence in the diagnosis. The Asperger’s Syndrome was highlighted as a separate condition for diagnosis by the DSM-V version reported in 2013. It is summarised within the ‘autism spectrum dysfunction’ of which Asperger’s is perceived as a mild form.

Just like other forms of autism, there are hardly any good treatments, including medication to cure a person with Asperger’s Syndrome.