Plusdotazione, high potential, giftedness: why words matter
A reflection on the terms Italians use for the same reality, and on what changes depending on which one is chosen.
Anyone looking for information about a child, a student or themselves runs into a vocabulary problem almost immediately. One website says plusdotazione. A school writes alto potenziale cognitivo, high cognitive potential. A social media account uses the initials APC. A translated book says bambini dotati, endowed children. Another leaves the English and writes gifted. They look like five different things and they are the same one, observed by people who chose different words.
This scattering has a practical cost. A family searching online finds results that seem to concern separate subjects; a teacher who wants to read up does not know which word to type; an adult trying to understand themselves gives up after the third page. It is worth lining the terms up, clarifying where they come from, and saying which one we use here, with our reasons.
A problem recognised thirty years ago
In 1994 the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe adopted a recommendation on the education of gifted children. The document recommended that the Committee of Ministers ask member states to recognise individual differences in legislation, to train teachers in identifying high ability, and to make provision within ordinary schooling, with flexible curricula (Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, 1994).
The final point of that text concerns vocabulary itself. The Assembly noted the need to clarify the notion of giftedness through an operational definition that would be accepted and understandable across different languages, and recommended setting up a dedicated committee of psychologists, sociologists and educationalists to reach one.
Thirty years on, that shared cross-language definition does not exist. The confusion you meet when searching online does not come from careless popularisers: it is a knot that a European institution identified in 1994 and that has remained untied.
The same document carried another warning, worth remembering: any specific provision for these students should be handled with discretion, to avoid the danger inherent in labelling and its unwanted consequences.
Where each word comes from
Giftedness is the oldest term and the most widespread in international literature. It derives from gift, and it is the word used in English-language research from Terman onwards. It carries an ambiguity scholars have discussed for decades: if it is a gift, whoever received it ought to be fortunate, and that makes it hard to talk about the struggle that often comes with it. It should be said, though, that what the term means has shifted considerably over time: from early research, which tied it to a score and to a promise of achievement, the field moved to definitions describing a way of functioning, made of asynchronous development and intensity. The word stayed, what it points to changed, and that is one of the reasons it is still in use despite its limits.
Plusdotazione is the Italian rendering of giftedness, built on dotazione, endowment, with the prefix plus. It is the term most used in Italian clinical and psychological practice, and the one adopted by the National Council of the Italian Association of Psychologists (Consiglio Nazionale dell'Ordine degli Psicologi) in its guidelines for assessment in developmental age (CNOP, 2018).
Alto potenziale cognitivo, high cognitive potential, often shortened to APC, shifts the emphasis from possession to possibility: not what a person has, but what they might develop. It is the wording chosen by the bill now before the Italian Parliament, titled Disposizioni in favore degli alunni e degli studenti ad alto potenziale cognitivo e delega al Governo per il riconoscimento dei medesimi.
Superdotazione and iperdotazione still circulate, mostly in older texts. Both prefixes suggest an excessive quantity, which is the main reason they have gradually fallen out of professional use.
The problem with the numbers
There is a second layer of confusion, less visible. The CNOP guidelines distinguish two groups by IQ: children with high cognitive potential, above 120, given as roughly 5 per cent of the population, and gifted children, above 130, at around 2 per cent (CNOP, 2018). Elsewhere, in practice and in popular writing, the two terms are used interchangeably.
These are the reference figures generally adopted, and we report them as such. It is worth saying, however, that more studies on the Italian population would be welcome: data gathered here would allow us to work with estimates less borrowed from other contexts, and it is a need the field has been flagging for some time.
The consequence shows up in families. A parent who receives a report saying high potential, and then finds online that giftedness starts higher up, ends up wondering whether their child belongs to some lesser category. The question arises from a measurement convention, and it concerns a young person who meanwhile is exactly who they were.
On this too the guidelines themselves urge caution, recalling that the full-scale IQ is not always interpretable: in uneven profiles, where the indices diverge widely, the overall score loses meaning. The number that separates the two words, in other words, is less stable than the word suggests.
Why we use giftedness
Our choice is to use giftedness and gifted, in Italian, without translating them. There are three reasons and none of them is conclusive.
The first concerns quantity. Plus, super, iper all say the same thing: more than the norm, on a rising scale. A gifted young person, however, is not the upgraded version of an ordinary one: they process the world differently, with an emotional intensity that accompanies the cognitive one, and they may well do badly at school. The definition formulated by the Columbus Group in 1991, still among the most used, describes an asynchronous development in which advanced capacity and heightened intensity combine to create an inner experience that is qualitatively different, and that renders the person vulnerable. A word that promises a bonus struggles to convey a vulnerability.
The second concerns potential. High cognitive potential has the merit of caution and the drawback of suggesting something still to be realised, almost a credit to be redeemed. Many gifted adults know the weight of that promise. Add that the adjective cognitive narrows the field to the mind, while emotional intensity and moral sensitivity are part of the picture at least as much as speed of thought.
The third is practical. Giftedness is the name this field of study goes by in the rest of the world. Using it means being able to read the international literature, cite it and discuss it without passing through translations that shift the meaning. For a project that publishes both academically and for people working in the field, that continuity matters.
The serious objection remains, and it should be stated: giftedness has its own problem, because gift suggests a good fortune that many families do not recognise in their daily experience. None of the available terms is clean. We chose the one that seems to us to distort least, knowing that it distorts too.
What words do not decide
In this field, professionals using different vocabularies coexist in good faith. A psychologist writing plusdotazione is using the term from their profession's guidelines; a school writing alto potenziale cognitivo is using the one that will appear in legislation; anyone translating an American text faces choices no Italian rendering fully resolves. Arguing about it does not settle who is right.
It serves rather to know that we are talking about the same thing.
The young person under discussion is one person, and every time two adults stop to clarify the vocabulary instead of working together, time is lost on a plane where they are not present.
On one thing it is worth being plain, and it is the same thing the Council of Europe flagged in 1994: none of these words is a merit, and the risk of the label is real. They are tools for naming a way of functioning, so that it can be recognised and supported. When they start to resemble a grade awarded to a person, they have stopped doing their job.
If you are trying to understand your child, a student or yourself, type the word that comes most naturally. You will find nearly all of them sooner or later, and beneath each one lies the same reality: a person who perceives, thinks and feels with an intensity that needs to be seen for what it is.
Keep reading
If you would like to know what we do with these words, our inclusive education manifesto sets out how we see learning, neurodivergence and giftedness.
On the legislative side, the Italian bill dedicated to gifted students is the most significant step taken in Italy in recent decades: what it provides for, where it stands, and what can already guide educational work.
References
- Consiglio Nazionale dell'Ordine degli Psicologi. (2018). Linee guida per la valutazione della plusdotazione cognitiva in età evolutiva [Guidelines for the assessment of cognitive giftedness in developmental age]. Adopted by resolution of 14 December 2018; the circulating version is dated 16 February 2019. Testo integrale in PDF
- Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. (1994). Education for gifted children (Recommendation 1248). pace.coe.int
- Senato della Repubblica. (2025). Disposizioni in favore degli alunni e degli studenti ad alto potenziale cognitivo e delega al Governo per il riconoscimento dei medesimi [Provisions for pupils and students with high cognitive potential] (A.S. 180, 19th legislature, unified text with A.S. 1041). Approved by the Senate on 7 October 2025 and transmitted to the Chamber of Deputies as A.C. 2654. Bill record
Note on the parliamentary process. The information given here is current as of 28 September 2026. As the measure is still under examination, we recommend checking its current status on the official websites of the Italian Chamber and Senate.