Brain Functioning Characteristics Of Verbal Gifted Chinese: An EEG Investigation

EEG technique was used to observe the cortical activation pattern of verbally giftedduring both verbal information processing and spatial information processing. Eighteencollege students gifted in literature writing (mean age=20.94; SD=1.06) and thirty normalcollege students (mean age=20.55; SD=1.68) were selected. The two groups accept theRaven’s Advanced Progressive Matrices（RAPM）, a reading comprehension test, atwo-dimensional mental rotation test and a three-dimensional mental rotation test（i.e.,measure mental rotation ability）, the Embedded Figures Test（i.e., measure spatialvisualization ability）, and Piaget’s Water-level Test（i.e., measure spatial perceptionability）.The behavioral results showed no significant differences between the two groups, norbetween the sexes on all the above mentioned tests. However, significant group differenceswere found in brain activation patterns during those tests. Specifically, the control groupshowed a left hemisphere dominant activation pattern when processing the readingcomprehension task, while the verbal gifted group showed a bilateral activation pattern,suggesting a heightened right hemisphere functioning in verbal processing, which may be aunique brain functioning characteristic of the verbal gifted. The control group showed aright-hemisphere dominant activation pattern on the two-dimensional mental rotation test,a left-hemisphere dominant activation pattern（i.e., dominant left frontal lobe and lefttemporal lobe activation）on the three-dimensional mental rotation test and the EmbeddedFigures Test, as well as a bilateral frontal lobe activation pattern on Piaget’s Water-levelTest. In contrast, the verbal gifted group showed a bilateral activation patterns all thespatial tests except Piaget’s Water-level Test, on which they exhibited a right hemispheredominant activation pattern. This result suggest a transfer effect of the dominant verbalprocessing brain functioning pattern to spatial processing, which may somehow mediatedby different sub-types of spatial ability. The aforementioned unique brain functioning characteristics (i.e., heightened righthemisphere functioning in verbal processing and the resulted bilateral activation pattern forinformation processing) may be the unique neural brain basis for gifted verbal ability.