Pixel International Conferences

Educational systems seeking to identify gifted and twice-exceptional (2e) students typically rely on imported cognitive-ability instruments that were neither designed nor normed for their national context; Greece, like several other European systems, has no standardised identification pathway. This paper compares widely used instruments, including the WISC-V, CogAT, SB-5 and the adaptive AID 3, and identifies three recurring limitations. First, composite-score fragmentation: global scores obscure uneven ability profiles, while profiles derived from score differences lack reliability. Second, ceiling effects: fixed-difficulty forms lose precision at the upper end of the distribution, where identification matters most. Third, 2e-blindness: because giftedness is judged from ability scores alone, the masking of high ability by a co-occurring difficulty such as ADHD remains undetected. The paper argues that these limitations stem from a design logic shared across instruments, not from individual tests, and derives from this critique the architecture of METIS (Multi-aspect Excellence and Talent Identification Scale), a digital battery in development for Greek students in Grades 2–9. Grounded in Cattell–Horn–Carroll (CHC) theory, METIS comprises five computerised adaptive tests (verbal, quantitative and non-verbal fluid reasoning; verbal and visuospatial working memory), each calibrated on a single scale across grades, so that a strength in one domain can be measured at the upper end even when another domain is weak. The giftedness threshold is applied to reasoning alone. Item-level response times are modelled jointly with accuracy to separate reasoning ability from working speed and persistence, so that slow responding does not lower the ability estimate. On this basis, masking is defined operationally as a divergence between reasoning, working memory and response timing, to be tested with a transparent probabilistic model against clinically confirmed cases. The paper concludes by discussing how a nationally calibrated instrument of this kind could ground a public, evidence-based identification framework for Greece and comparable Mediterranean systems.

 

Keywords: giftedness identification; twice-exceptionality; masking; CHC theory; computerised adaptive testing; response time. 

 

REFERENCES

 

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