Practical Interventions to Improve Domain-Specific Social, Emotional, or Academic Outcomes for Twice-Exceptional Individuals (2e)

Abstract

What began nearly a century ago with the contributions of Hollingworth and Asperger, among others, has developed into a field dedicated to the study of gifted individuals with a disability.   These twice-exceptional (2e) people and their unique set of needs differ from those of their once-exceptional counterparts on either end of the spectrum and often remain unaddressed or are discovered very late in life resulting in longterm consequences.  For those discovered, effective treatment options to improve their quality of life remain uncertain.  The goal of the present paper was to determine whether effective interventions exist to improve domain-specific (i.e., social, emotional, or academic) outcomes for people exhibiting both signs of giftedness and disability.   A query was performed using evidence databases TRIP and PDQ in addition to University at Buffalo Libraries holdings for "twice-exceptional," "Giftedness," "Disability," and "intervention." The hits were reduced to the four most relevant, freely available studies in English that were selected for critique.  Despite the selected studies being found to share methodological similarities that were their strengths and conducive to comparison, they also had threats to validity that served as potential weakness.  Not only can directly effective interventions improve specific domains for 2e individuals, but the effects of domain-specific interventions may carry over into another domain resulting in indirect effects.