Each and every one of us has certain cognitive abilities, varying greatly depending on each person. These allow us to be able to adapt to the environment and solve problems, establishing strategies and allowing us to carry out a great diversity of behaviors.
Evaluating the degree to which we have them allows us to make a prediction of the ability to adapt and cope with situations, having developed different mechanisms for this. One of the concepts used to calculate intelligence is the intellectual quotient or IQ, which makes it possible to assess it and compare it with the population average.
In most people we will find an intellectual capacity that, although variable, is usually within the average. However, we can also find the case of people who either have abilities below average (in the case of intellectual disability) or who far exceed them, the latter being the case of the gifted.
Establishing at what point we go from normal intelligence to high intellectual abilities could be difficult at first glance, but that is why concepts such as IQ can be of some use. What is the IQ of a gifted person? We are going to see it throughout this article.
Before delving into what the IQ of a gifted person is, it is worth mentioning first what we call intelligence and what exactly we mean by the concept of intellectual quotient.
With regard to intelligence or cognitive capacity, although the concept is known to everyone, there is great difficulty in providing a concrete, unitary definition that makes clear what its limits are in relation to other concepts. Besides There is great controversy regarding the definition of this skill or capacity there are various theories in this regard that even discuss whether we can consider it a single capacity or rather a set of capabilities or multiple intelligences.
Broadly speaking, we understand intelligence as the ability of the human being (or other types of beings) to use their cognitive resources efficiently and optimally in order to adapt and respond to environmental demands, being able thanks to it and among other things, capture and understand internal or external information at high speed, generate strategies that allow the achievement of specific objectives solve problems or even anticipate events and foresee difficulties.
Although the concept to be discussed may be this, the truth is that measuring something so intangible is complex. To do this, one of the possible ways to do it is to evaluate the subject’s performance in different tasks that require the resolution of different types of tasks associated with intelligent behavior and from which to observe different facets of it.
In this sense, the first intelligence test would be born, designed to evaluate the intellectual performance of children and made by Binet and Simon after having been entrusted with it by the French government (in order to evaluate the students and establish educational measures for those minors who could not follow an ordinary education). The concept of Mental Age would emerge in one of the reviews of said test, in which mental capacity was assessed based on the average age at which the majority of children could solve the same problems.
However, after observing that the existence of specific differences had different importance depending on age, psychologist William Stern would end up generating what is known today as Intelligence Quotient or IQ. This quotient is a method that evaluates cognitive ability based on the division of mental age and chronological age, subsequently multiplying it by one hundred (thus eliminating decimals), and allows obtaining a score comparable with the measurement of other subjects of the same age.
It is this concept that is used today to measure intelligence although there are various controversies in this regard (for example, it is necessary to take into account the Flynn effect through which the measured IQ increases over the centuries not due to greater intelligence but to aspects such as greater contact with activities intellectuals and technological development).
Intelligence Quotient or IQ is a relative measure of intelligence, whose meaning only makes sense in comparison to the population average. In this sense, it has been established that intelligence follows a normal distribution in the population considering its average a score of 100 and observing a standard deviation (a concept that tells us about the expected variability in scores) of 15 points.
In this sense, we would consider normal intelligence (that which most of the population has) that which reflects an IQ that ranges between 85 and 115. Below 85 and up to 70 we talk about borderline intelligence and above 115 and up to 130 for brilliance or intellectually gifted people.
The existence of capacities well below or far above the average will be considered as such only when they exceed two standard deviations above or below. Thus, only below an IQ of 70 would we be talking about intellectual disability (which as it went down would become more and more severe), while above 130 would we be talking about high abilities or giftedness.
In this way and answering the question that gives rise to this article, when we talk about gifted people, we are talking about people who, in the evaluation of their intelligence or cognitive ability, have obtained scores whose transformation into IQ would indicate an intellectual quotient greater than 130. This It is independent of sex or age as long as we are dealing with a subject over 12 years of age and the group with which the subject is compared is the same age range.
Does being gifted mean having a high IQ?
When we talk about a gifted person, It is easy for us to identify it with a person whose IQ is above 130 But, although this is not certain (in fact, the definition made by the WHO is this), for some authors the mere possession of this level of ability would not be enough to speak of true giftedness.
And obtaining a certain score on an intelligence test that indicates an intellectual capacity above average is not the only requirement to be considered gifted: it is also taken into account that said intellectual capacity is shown in most domains and types of intelligence (that is, it would not be enough to be excellent in logical-mathematical skills or music but it would also have to be excellent in the rest of the areas, in which case we would be dealing with someone who is uniquely talented), knowing how to apply their abilities in an adaptive way and the existence of high creativity or capacity for it.
Giftedness is a very rare characteristic in the population, with around 2% said to have high cognitive abilities. However, many of them have made notable contributions and they have become well-known figures in different fields, including science, economics or art. Below we cite four well-known examples.
1. Marilyn Monroe
Norma Jean Baker, better known as Marilyn Monroe, was considered one of the sexiest and most attractive women in the world. But although she is remembered for her beauty, her movies, her relationships and her tragic death, the truth is that behind all of this was a woman with a level of intelligence higher than Albert’s. Einstein. Specifically, five points higher: Marilyn Monroe had an IQ of 165.
2. Stephen Hawking
The recently deceased genius of physics and astrophysics, known for his studies on the universe and especially for his studies on black holes, He was a person with an extremely high IQ with an IQ of 152.
3. Marilyn vos Savant
Perhaps this name is not as well known in our country as the other two, but this writer and columnist of North American origin, who is also, among other things, director of finance at Jarvik Heart, speaker (having been named one of the five most outstanding speakers in 1999) and a member of societies such as Mensa or the Council of the National Association for Gifted Children, he is the person who holds the Guinness Record with the highest IQ, with an IQ of 228
