Do gifted children without specific learning disabilities read more efficiently than typically developing children?

IntroductionThere are no published data on the written language skills of gifted children (GC). The objective of the present study was to evaluate reading abilities of GC vs. normative data from typically developing French children (TDC). Like English, French is considered to be an opaque language.MethodGC completed the Wechsler Intelligence Scales and a battery of language tests. Only children with a score two standard deviations (SD) above the norm were included. GC with current or past academic difficulties or specific learning disorders were excluded. The GC’s scores were compared with TDC’s normative scores for language tests in a chi-square-test and corrected for multiple comparisons.ResultsForty-five GC were included. The highest GC’s mean scores were for the WISC’s Verbal Comprehension Index (VCI) and the lowest for the Processing Speed Index (from more than two SDs to one SD higher above the TDC’s normative scores). GC were between 1.3 and 4.7 times more likely than TDC to achieve a high score. After correction, the distributions of the GC’s and TDC’s scores differed significantly with regard to spoonerism, phoneme deletion, and rapid automatic naming (p