About Us

Directed by Deirdre V. Lovecky, Ph.D.

I have been a clinical psychologist for more than 25 years, and specialize in working with gifted children. My interests are in helping to identify gifted children and to design meaningful school programs and outside enrichment activities for them to pursue. I am especially interested in these children's needs for increased complex stimulation and abstraction, as well as their more complex social and emotional needs.

Highly, exceptionally and profoundly gifted children are of particular interest. I have assessed more than 200 children over IQ 150. These children have extremely specialized social, emotional and educational needs that are different from those of average children. Thus, programs that work with average children do not work well with very gifted children.

I am interested in the needs of gifted children who are also learning disabled or AD/HD, have Asperger Syndrome or other behavioral or mental health disorders. I have assessed and treated many such children over the years. I am always struck by the different ways in which they resemble other gifted children without their disability than more average children with the disability. This raises many issues for these 2e (twice exceptional) children in all areas of their lives.

As a clinical psychologist I have had a particular interest in assessment of giftedness in children and have participated in the standardization of some of the IQ tests being used in schools today. I also participated in the NAGC Task Force on testing gifted children and in providing data for the Extended Norms for Psych Corps for the WISC-IV. I also have done research on the assessment of gifted children with disabilities on the Stanford-Binet and the WISC-IV.

Other interests of mine include discovering the hidden gifted in refugee children who have recently arrived in the United States and in helping to identify mental health problems in all refugee children in RI.

I obtained by doctorate in physiological/comparative and clinical psychology from the University of Florida. I did my clinical internship at Emma Pendleton Bradley Hospital in East Providence, RI, which is one of the first hospitals specializing in children’s mental health needs in the United States. I have been in private practice since the 1980’s specializing in the needs of gifted children. I am licensed in both RI and MA.