The overexcitability test measures a trait style, not giftedness

0 The short answer

An overexcitability test is a self-report questionnaire about the intensity of your responses in five areas, taken from Kazimierz Dąbrowski's theory of positive disintegration, so it describes a trait style and does not measure intelligence, giftedness or any condition. The Overexcitability Questionnaire-Two (OEQ-II), a research questionnaire developed by Falk and colleagues in 1999, has 50 items, 10 for each of the psychomotor, sensual, imaginational, intellectual and emotional forms, and a 2026 meta-analysis of 20 studies found that the link between overexcitability and giftedness was non-existent when giftedness was defined as general intelligence or cognitive ability. An adult who wants evidence of ability needs a different kind of test, and the benchmark is a battery such as the WAIS-5 given by a psychologist; ACIS is one online option (Quick at 15 dollars and about 45 minutes, Optimized at 30 dollars and about 110 minutes, Full Scale at 50 dollars and about 175 minutes, prices read October 29, 2026), and its decisive limit is that it measures abilities only, online and unsupervised, and does not measure sensitivity or personality or diagnose anything.

1 What is overexcitability, and where does the term come from?

Overexcitability is a concept from the theory of positive disintegration, developed by the Polish psychiatrist and psychologist Kazimierz Dąbrowski, and it names an above average responsiveness to stimuli that the theory treats as one ingredient of personality development. De Bondt and Van Petegem (2015), writing in Frontiers in Psychology, summarize the theory as follows. Dąbrowski (1902 to 1980) held that personality is achieved through a process of positive disintegration, which begins with the breakdown of a primitive mental organization aimed at meeting biological needs and conforming to societal norms. Reintegration then takes place at a higher level of functioning, which they describe as characterized by autonomy, authenticity and empathy. How far a person can travel along that path depends, in the theory, on developmental potential, which they say is determined by innate heightened excitability, by specific talents and abilities, and by autonomous inner forces that the theory calls dynamisms.

The word itself has a specific meaning. De Bondt and Van Petegem write that Dąbrowski used it for an above average responsiveness to stimuli, which he attributed to heightened sensitivity of the central nervous system, and which produces a different, more intense and more multi-faceted experience of internal and external reality. Three consequences follow, and the rest of this page depends on them.

The first is that overexcitability is a theoretical construct and not a diagnosis. Nothing in the sources opened for this page presents Dąbrowski's overexcitability as a medical or psychiatric category, and Fries and colleagues (2022, discussed below) state that his concept does not indicate physical or mental illness. De Bondt and Van Petegem describe the OEQ-II as a questionnaire that researchers use as a supplementary measure of dispositional traits, and the theory is about how personality develops. The second is that the explanation the theory offers, a heightened sensitivity of the nervous system, is part of the theory and not something a questionnaire can test. A questionnaire records what a person says about their experience, and the step from that to the nervous system is an assumption (our reasoning, not a finding of those authors). The third is that the theory is a living scholarly dispute and not settled doctrine. Chojnowski, in a 2023 article in a Polish university journal, argues that debates in the United States discussed some parts of the theory, such as overexcitabilities, and neglected others, such as dynamisms, and that this simplified the framework Dąbrowski proposed.

Why does a page about an ability test spend time on this? Because the term travels into discussions of gifted adults. The Mendaglio and Tillier review (2006) in the Journal for the Education of the Gifted describes the background: over the preceding 20 years a significant body of literature had applied the theory to gifted individuals, much of it prescriptive, and the research focus had been overexcitability. The page on gifted adults covers the wider question of what giftedness means after school, and this page covers one claim that circulates inside it: that a trait questionnaire can show giftedness.

The word has also been stretched to name a set of health conditions, a usage covered in its own section below because the two meanings are often confused.

2 What are the five forms of overexcitability?

The theory names five forms, psychomotor, sensual, imaginational, intellectual and emotional, and it treats the last three as the ones that matter most for advanced personality development. The descriptions below come from De Bondt and Van Petegem's review of the theory. They are the theory's descriptions of styles of responding, not questionnaire items, and none of this page reproduces an item.

De Bondt and Van Petegem add that, in the theory, emotional, intellectual and imaginational overexcitability aid the transformation of the lower forms, psychomotor and sensual, so that their energy serves the developmental process. They describe positive developmental potential as made up of all five.

Two points keep these names from being misread. First, "intellectual overexcitability" does not mean intellectual ability. The description in the table is about how a person engages with ideas, which is a style of engagement that can be present at any level of reasoning performance. The next sections show that the research bears this out. Second, "psychomotor overexcitability" is a description of energy and expression within the theory. This page does not map any of the five forms onto a clinical category, and it does not suggest that a high score on any of them means a person has a condition. Questions about attention, activity level or mood belong to a clinician.

People who search for an "emotional overexcitability test", an "intellectual overexcitability test" or a "psychomotor overexcitability test" are looking at the subscales of one questionnaire, not at separate tests. In the OEQ-II each form is a scale of 10 items inside a single 50 item instrument.

Do the forms differ by gender? In a sample of 516 higher education students in Flanders, De Bondt and Van Petegem found that women scored significantly higher than men on emotional and sensual overexcitability and significantly lower on psychomotor overexcitability. The authors list the convenience sample as a limitation and acknowledge small sample sizes, especially for men, so this describes one group of respondents and is not a fixed fact about men or women.

3 How is overexcitability measured?

The main instrument in the studies opened for this page is the Overexcitability Questionnaire-Two, a 50 item self-report scale with 10 items for each form, and its psychometric record is real but thinner and more mixed than its popularity suggests. De Bondt and Van Petegem state that Falk and colleagues (1999) developed it by incorporating results of numerous earlier studies on hyperexcitability, and that respondents rate each statement on a five-point scale from "not at all like me" to "very much like me", with a high value representing a high level of overexcitability. The manual that describes its development, testing and scoring is sold through the store of the Gifted Development Center for 25 dollars (page read October 29, 2026). The same review reports that the questionnaire has been translated into Turkish, Chinese, Korean, Spanish, French and Dutch, and that it is used mostly in research on giftedness.

What does the evidence on its structure show? De Bondt and Van Petegem report that Falk and colleagues, using principal components analysis with varimax rotation, found a stable and conceptually clear five-factor structure with loadings above 0.50 and good internal consistency in two samples. They also say that, in spite of its growing use, the instrument "has been validated in a limited way". Later work was mixed. They summarize an earlier study of the Dutch translation, in which a strict confirmatory model where each item loads on only one factor was rejected and a more flexible model fit partly. They add that Warne (2011) could not establish metric invariance across gender, meaning the items could not be shown to work the same way for men and women, and that a French study first reduced the instrument to 35 items. De Bondt and Van Petegem's own Bayesian analysis of their 516 students found that the flexible Bayesian models fit well and that approximate invariance across gender held, and they concluded that this supports the factorial validity of the OEQ-II. They also note that the hypothesized loading pattern was only partly recovered and that psychomotor overexcitability did not load significantly on the general factor of positive developmental potential.

Read plainly, that record means three things. The questionnaire has a five-part structure that can be recovered with flexible statistical models, which is a point in its favor. The structure is not as clean as the five labels imply, with items that also load on scales other than their own. And the studies described here used convenience samples, among them students. These sources treat the OEQ-II as a research questionnaire, and none of them gives an adult norm table, so this page does not give one.

Because every item is a statement about the self, every score is also a self-description. A person who rates a statement as very much like them is reporting a judgment about their own typical behavior, made against whatever comparison group they carry in their head. The Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing (AERA, APA and NCME, 2014) describe the family this belongs to: personality tests, which they say may include a series of questions, such as self-report inventories, to which the test taker chooses among well-defined options, and whose scores may be regarded as reflecting the underlying theoretical constructs that guided the test's construction. That wording fits the OEQ-II. Its scores reflect Dąbrowski's constructs, and they are only as meaningful as the evidence that the constructs are measured well and mean what the theory says.

4 Is there a free overexcitability test online, and what does it tell you?

Free overexcitability quizzes exist, but a result from one is only as good as the questionnaire behind it, and none of them can tell you whether you are gifted or have a condition. This page does not link to any online quiz and does not evaluate any, because ACIS has not examined their items, their scoring or their comparison groups, and a quiz that states none of those cannot be assessed. What the sources do establish is narrower. The questionnaire behind the studies opened for this page is the OEQ-II, its manual is a paid publication, and the two primary studies opened here that name the OEQ-II as their instrument describe a convenience sample of higher education students and a survey of members of a high-IQ society.

How should a reader judge any online overexcitability quiz? The Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing, Standard 1.1, ask that a test developer set forth clearly how scores are intended to be interpreted and used, delimit the population for which the test is intended, and describe the construct clearly. Its comment adds that no test permits interpretations that are valid for all purposes or in all situations. Applied to a quiz, those standards become four questions. Does the page name the instrument it is based on, and does it say whether it is the OEQ-II or something written by the page's authors? Does it say how it turns answers into a score? Does it say who your score is compared with, if anyone? And does it claim a result the instrument was never built for, such as showing that you are gifted, that you have a diagnosis, or that you need a particular kind of support? A page that claims any of the last three has gone beyond what the research supports, as the following sections show.

The page on free IQ tests applies the same questions to cognitive tests that advertise themselves as free, and its reasoning transfers: ask what the score is compared against before you ask what it means.

What a quiz can do is what any self-report can do. It can give a vocabulary for how you describe your own intensity, curiosity, energy or sensitivity, and it can prompt you to think about whether those descriptions fit your life. That is useful as reflection. It is not evidence about ability, and the evidence about whether it is evidence about giftedness is the subject of the next section.

5 Does overexcitability mark giftedness? What the meta-analyses found

The two meta-analyses of giftedness and overexcitability agree that gifted samples tend to score higher on some forms, and the newer one shows that the difference depends on how giftedness was defined and is non-existent when it is defined as general intelligence or cognitive ability. The first synthesis is Winkler and Voight (2016) in Gifted Child Quarterly. Their abstract opens with the claim they set out to test: that textbooks, websites, research articles and popular resources have stated that gifted individuals have longer and more pronounced responses to stimuli than the general population, and that this has become a commonly used lens for understanding giftedness. They say there were reasons to be skeptical about the evidence, and they pooled studies that compared overexcitability scores of intellectually gifted and nongifted samples. Gifted samples had higher mean overexcitability scores than nongifted samples. The effect for psychomotor overexcitability was not statistically significant, the effects for emotional and sensual overexcitability were small, and the effects for intellectual and imaginational overexcitability were medium. The abstract closes by saying that a number of important limitations and implications exist.

What do "small" and "medium" mean here? They describe the size of the gap between two group averages. In general statistical terms (our reasoning, not a finding of those authors), a small or medium gap between averages still leaves a wide overlap between the groups, so many people in the nongifted samples would score as high as many people in the gifted samples. That is why no overexcitability score can show that a particular person is gifted: a difference between groups is not a rule for sorting individuals.

The second synthesis is newer and larger. Olszewski-Kubilius and colleagues (2026), in Gifted Child Quarterly, analyzed 230 effects extracted from 20 empirical studies. Their abstract reports the following.

The authors recommend caution about assumptions regarding the prevalence of overexcitabilities among gifted students and about using overexcitabilities as indicators of giftedness in school-based referral and identification. Two lines of that table deserve a second look. The first is the contrast between the definitions. When giftedness meant having been identified as gifted, the relationship was strongest, and when it meant general intelligence or cognitive ability, the relationship was non-existent. The abstract does not say what the identification processes were or why that definition gives the strongest result, so no explanation can be drawn from it; the fact itself is enough for the purpose of this page. A label assigned by a process is not the same thing as a score on a cognitive test, and in these studies the questionnaire tracked the first and not the second. The second line is the age finding. The abstract reports no difference for adults, which matters for a page written for adults, although it does not say how many adult comparisons there were.

Two cautions belong here. This page read the abstracts of both meta-analyses, because the publisher blocked the full texts, so it reports no figure that the abstracts do not give. And a synthesis is only as strong as the studies inside it, which is why the 2026 authors warn about publication bias. Neither meta-analysis shows that intense people are less able, or that gifted people are never intense. The 2026 analysis indicates that the questionnaire is a poor stand-in for general intelligence or cognitive ability.

Popular lists connect intensity and giftedness in the other direction as well, treating a set of habits as signs of a high IQ. The page on the signs of high intelligence asks what each claimed sign rests on, and the page on viral high-IQ quirks does so habit by habit. For a reader whose real question is where the gifted range begins in IQ terms, the page on the gifted IQ range explains what a score of 130 or above means in percentiles and rarity.

6 Is overexcitability just openness to experience?

A 2016 study of 461 people found that a model treating each overexcitability and its matching facet of openness to experience as one joint factor gave interpretable loadings while a model keeping them separate did not, which led its authors to argue that the field should talk about openness rather than overexcitabilities. The study is Vuyk, Krieshok and Kerr (2016), in Gifted Child Quarterly. Its abstract explains the starting point. Openness to experience is a personality factor in the five-factor model and is composed of six facets, and those facets appear conceptually analogous to overexcitabilities, which the theory of positive disintegration describes as displays of inner energy guiding individuals toward advanced potential. The sample combined 149 creative adolescents and adults with 312 adults from the general population, for a total of 461. The authors used exploratory structural equation modeling to compare two models, one in which each overexcitability and its corresponding openness facet formed separate factors, and one in which each pair formed a joint factor. The separate-factor model had acceptable fit but uninterpretable loadings, while the joint-factor model had acceptable fit and interpretable loadings. From that they concluded that openness seems to encompass overexcitabilities, and they wrote that the field should align with well-researched psychological theories such as the five-factor model and begin to talk about openness rather than overexcitabilities.

What the critique says, and what it does not say, matters. It does not say that the experiences people describe are imaginary. A person who is moved deeply by music, or who cannot stop asking why, has those experiences whatever they are called. The critique is about the label and about incremental value: if a questionnaire scale overlaps this heavily with an established personality trait, then a new name adds little explanatory power beyond that trait. Fries and colleagues, in a 2022 paper in Frontiers in Psychology, restate the point when they write that investigations of overexcitability as interpreted within the theory of positive disintegration have concluded that it has hardly any incremental explanatory value beyond personality in characterizing gifted individuals, and they cite Vuyk and colleagues for it. In their own data, a broad personality model, the HEXACO, appeared better suited than overexcitabilities to explain the associations they examined.

The limits of the critique are real as well. It rests on one study of 461 people, one sample of which consisted of 149 people described as creative, and this page read its abstract and not its full text. One study does not close a debate, and Chojnowski's 2023 article, cited earlier, shows that the theory itself has been interpreted in competing ways. What the study suggests is that the claim "overexcitability is a distinct trait" cannot be taken for granted, because a better studied trait appears to account for the same ground. Its abstract reports no test of giftedness, so the question of whether overexcitability identifies gifted people rests on the meta-analyses above.

How does openness relate to ability? The page on IQ and personality reports the large meta-analyses, and its summary is that the clearest positive association between cognitive ability and the Big Five domains is with openness, especially its intellectual curiosity facets, while most other correlations are small and depend on age and method. That fits the pattern above. An association between ability and a curiosity-related trait is modest, and it is a long way from a questionnaire that identifies ability. The page on IQ and creativity covers the neighboring question, since part of that study sample was described as creative.

7 Is overexcitability a sign of anxiety, mental illness or a diagnosis?

Overexcitability is not a diagnosis and not a measure of any condition, and the research that tied the word to health conditions uses it in a different sense, in surveys of high-IQ society members, and the authors of a 2022 follow-up survey say their own findings may reflect who joins such a society. The Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing (AERA, APA and NCME, 2014), in their discussion of personality assessment, note that scores outside the expected range may be considered strong expressions of normal traits or may be indicative of psychopathology, and that such scores also may reflect normal functioning of the person within a culture different from that of the norm group. In our reading, a single questionnaire score cannot separate those possibilities, and doing so takes a trained clinician with a full history, which an online quiz does not provide.

The Fries study is the most informative test of the second meaning. In a preregistered survey of 615 members of the high-IQ society Mensa from Austria, Germany, Hungary, Switzerland and the United Kingdom, they found elevated prevalences of several self-reported conditions compared with the general population, including autism spectrum conditions, depression and generalized anxiety, while asthma, allergies and autoimmune diseases were not elevated, contrary to the earlier account. They then wrote that "it is possible that the effects are caused by sample selectiveness (i.e., membership in a high-IQ society) rather than high IQ itself." In their limitations they add that membership in Mensa is unlikely to be equally attractive to all intellectually gifted individuals, that many gifted persons never seek admission to such a society, and that online surveys carry risks such as socially desirable responding. They also report that the number of diagnosed conditions was only moderately associated with OEQ-II scores. The pages on anxiety and IQ and on IQ and mental health explain why surveys of selected groups and studies of whole populations can point in different directions, and they should be read before this survey is taken as evidence about intelligent people in general.

The practical consequences for a reader are direct. A high score on an overexcitability quiz is not a sign of a disorder, and a low score is not a sign of good health. A quiz cannot say whether a worry is anxiety, whether restlessness is something a clinician would assess, or whether a mood needs treatment. None of the five scales in the OEQ-II was described in the sources opened for this page as a screening tool, and those sources treat it as a trait measure. If you are struggling with distress, anxiety, low mood, sleep or attention, talk to a doctor or a licensed mental health professional.

8 How does overexcitability differ from cognitive ability?

Overexcitability is a self-described style of responding, while cognitive ability is the best a person can do on tasks that have right and wrong answers, and the CHC model describes only the second. The distinction is often put as typical behavior versus maximum performance, a heading under which the personality pages of this site take it up in detail. In the CHC (Cattell-Horn-Carroll) model, which the page on the CHC model lays out, the broad abilities include fluid reasoning (Gf), comprehension and knowledge (Gc), quantitative reasoning (Gq), visual processing (Gv), working memory (Gwm) and processing speed (Gs). Each is defined by performance on tasks scored against a standard. The page on what IQ measures explains how a Full Scale IQ summarizes those abilities and where it stops.

A contrast with each overexcitability form shows why the two do not substitute for each other. The pairings below are for contrast and not for equivalence, and the sources opened for this page do not test them.

The processing speed row is the one a reader could most easily confuse, because "psychomotor" sounds like speed. Processing speed (Gs), as the cognitive domains page states, concerns how quickly and efficiently you can perform simple cognitive operations, particularly under time pressure. The page on the processing speed test shows what that looks like in an adult-normed profile. Someone with abundant physical energy can be slow or fast on a timed symbol task, and the sources opened here state no connection between the two.

Tests of reasoning make the contrast concrete. The sibling pages on Raven's Advanced Progressive Matrices and on the inductive reasoning test cover tests in which a person finds a rule and applies it, and the pages on the critical thinking test and the problem solving test cover reasoning and problem solving tests. In all of them there is a right answer and a score that can be compared with a defined group. A person who is intense, curious and driven to understand can do well on them, and so can a person who is calm and describes themselves as unremarkable. The 2026 meta-analysis fits that separation: it found no link when giftedness was defined as general intelligence or cognitive ability, so a self-report of intensity gives no basis for saying which.

A reader who has seen overexcitability described as being wired differently should know that the sources opened for this page present that as the theory's interpretation. No questionnaire study opened here measured the nervous system, so it is a theoretical idea and not a finding.

9 Which test should you take if you want evidence of ability?

An adult who wants evidence of ability needs a test that scores performance on tasks with right and wrong answers and compares it with a defined adult group, and the real options are a psychologist's battery, a proctored society exam or a normed online battery. The table compares them with the questionnaire route. Prices and times come from pages opened on October 29, 2026 and can change.

The Pearson WAIS-5 page describes the test as an individually administered clinical instrument for assessing cognitive ability, lists the age range 16:0 to 90:11, and offers paper or Q-interactive administration. The page lists a purchase qualification level (Level C), so the route to it is a psychologist. The page on where to take an IQ test compares in person and online routes, and the page on gifted tests for adults explains how a professional assessment, a society exam and an online battery differ for someone asking whether they are gifted.

American Mensa says on its testing page that a qualifying score indicates you tested at or above 98 percent of the general population, and that tests are proctored by Local Group volunteers or given in private sessions at approved facilities (page read October 29, 2026; a promotion was running on the page, and the table gives the regular prices). A society exam answers one question, whether you qualify. The page on the best online IQ tests and the page on IQ tests for adults compare the online alternatives, and a reader who expects a result well above the common range can read the page on high range IQ testing first.

ACIS is one concrete option and not the only one, and it is sold by the publisher of this page, so weigh that disclosure as you read. What it offers is a profile of abilities, as the page on cognitive ability tests describes, with scores that are compared with adults of ages 16 to 90. It offers nothing on overexcitability. A person who completes both gets two descriptions that answer different questions, and neither can stand in for the other.

10 How do you read a questionnaire score next to an ability score?

A scale score from a trait questionnaire is a self-description with no ability meaning, while an ability score is a position in a defined adult group with a margin of error, and each needs its own reading. For the OEQ-II, De Bondt and Van Petegem state that a high value on the five-point scale represents a high level of overexcitability. That is all the scale says. The sources opened for this page give no norm table that would turn a scale score into a position among adults, and the gender result in their student sample (women higher on emotional and sensual, lower on psychomotor) shows that group differences exist inside the scores. The Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing, Standard 5.8, ask that norms, if used, refer to clearly described populations and include the groups with whom test users will ordinarily wish to compare examinees. A trait scale without such a comparison group tells you how you rated yourself, and that is the end of what it can say.

An ability score is built the other way around. ACIS reports subtest results as scaled scores from 1 to 19, with a mean of 10 and a standard deviation of 3, and indices and the Full Scale IQ on the familiar scale with a mean of 100 and a standard deviation of 15, alongside percentiles and a 95 percent confidence interval. The page on how IQ scores are normed explains the logic of comparing a person with a reference group. A confidence interval is the honest statement of the margin around any one number, and the page on reliability and validity shows why a single score is never exact.

Precision falls as scores get narrower. Standard 2.3 asks that estimates of reliability and precision be reported for each total score, subscore or combination of scores that is to be interpreted, and its comment warns that the consistency of total scores may be acceptably high while subscores may have unacceptably low reliability. Standard 2.4 asks that when an interpretation emphasizes the difference between two observed scores of an individual, reliability and precision data be provided for that difference. Both apply to the habit of reading one subscale of a questionnaire, or one subtest, as a verdict. A person who rates highly on intellectual overexcitability and scores at an unremarkable level on a vocabulary subtest has not produced a contradiction, because the two scores come from different instruments and answer different questions.

11 What can an overexcitability result not tell you, and how can an adult use it?

An overexcitability result cannot tell you that you are gifted, what your IQ is, whether you have a condition, or whether you need support, and what it can offer an adult is a vocabulary for self-reflection. The research shows each of those limits. The 2026 meta-analysis found no link when giftedness was defined as general intelligence or cognitive ability, the openness critique suggests that the scales overlap with a better studied personality trait, and the health condition research that borrowed the word did so on a self-selected sample and in a sense that its critics say departs from the theory.

Much of the evidence opened for this page also comes from particular groups. De Bondt and Van Petegem's sample was 516 higher education students, two thirds of them 19 years old, who completed the questionnaire online in a survey, and the 2026 meta-analysis frames its comparisons in terms of gifted and non-gifted students while reporting adults separately. Findings from students do not automatically describe a 40 year old, and these sources say less about adults.

A fair use of the concept starts with what it is: a way of describing how strongly you respond to ideas, feelings, senses, imagery and activity. If that description helps you understand a pattern in your life, such as why long meetings drain you or why a book can absorb you for days, it has done its work. The step that the research does not support is the next one, from the description to a claim about ability or status. A reader who was told in school that they were gifted and now wonders what that label means will find that question handled in the page on IQ tests for former gifted kids, and a reader asking what giftedness looks like in a working adult will find the research in the page on gifted adults and their life outcomes.

Some adults ask whether intensity alongside difficulties with attention or learning means something more. The pages on twice exceptional adults and on twice exceptional giftedness explain what that term means and what a score can hide. A decision about a condition belongs to a clinician who can take a history, and no questionnaire on this page or elsewhere online can make it.

12 Where ACIS sits, and what a buyer should do

ACIS is one commercial option for an adult-normed profile of cognitive abilities, it does not measure overexcitability, sensitivity or personality, and its limits are as important as its features: it is online, unsupervised, not clinical and available in English only. The Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing (AERA, APA and NCME, 2014) bear on how any score from this page should be read. Standard 1.1 asks the developer to set out how scores are intended to be interpreted and used, to delimit the population and to describe the construct clearly, and its comment says that no test permits interpretations that are valid for all purposes or in all situations. Standard 5.8 asks that norms refer to clearly described populations. Standard 6.3 asks that changes or disruptions to standardized administration be documented, and its comment says that testing environments that are not monitored, such as those on the Internet, should meet the standardized administration conditions, and that otherwise the report on scores should note that standardized conditions were not guaranteed. ACIS is such an environment. The site's research page says ACIS "is not intended for clinical diagnosis, hiring decisions, accommodation determinations or admission to high IQ societies", and the manual says verbal and knowledge tasks are affected by English proficiency and educational exposure. The page on the ACIS technical manual documents how the battery is organized for readers who want the detail before they buy, and this page quotes no statistic from it.

What ACIS does: 20 subtests in six CHC domains, reported as a Full Scale IQ and six primary indices (verbal comprehension, fluid reasoning, quantitative reasoning, visual spatial, working memory and processing speed), with scaled subtest scores, percentiles and a 95 percent confidence interval for the Full Scale IQ, against adult norms for ages 16 to 90. Quick costs 15 dollars for 6 subtests in 3 domains, about 45 minutes. Optimized costs 30 dollars for 13 subtests in 5 domains, about 110 minutes. Full Scale costs 50 dollars for all 20 subtests, about 175 minutes. The Custom Test costs 5 dollars per subtest. These are one time payments with no subscription, prices read October 29, 2026. Breaks are allowed, progress is saved between subtests, and there are 30 days to finish. Three subtests, Digit Span, Alphanumeric Sequencing and Arithmetic, present their items as audio and need working sound, so take them in a quiet room with headphones or speakers that work. The refund terms read: "Full refund within 5 days if the report does not deliver the features described at checkout or a technical issue prevents you from accessing your results."

Here is what to do. If your question is whether you are intense, sensitive or curious, a trait questionnaire and your own reflection are the tools, and nothing on this page replaces them. If your question is whether your abilities are high, or what they look like across reasoning, knowledge, memory and speed, the free trial of the Full Scale form needs no card and shows the profile for the subtests it covers, and finished trial subtests are kept if you later unlock a form that includes them. If your question is clinical, or concerns distress or attention, start with a doctor or a licensed psychologist. A normal online result would not settle a clinical question, and a high one would not confer a label.

13 Sources Behind This Page

Every figure above is traceable to one of the following, and each is linked at the point where it is used. The two meta-analyses (Winkler and Voight, 2016; Olszewski-Kubilius and colleagues, 2026) and the study by Vuyk, Krieshok and Kerr (2016) were read through their published abstracts, because the publisher blocked the full texts; nothing is reported from them beyond what the abstracts state. Prices, ages and times were read on October 29, 2026 and can change.

• American Educational Research Association, American Psychological Association and National Council on Measurement in Education. Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing. Washington, DC: AERA, 2014 (Standards 1.1, 2.3, 2.4, 5.8 and 6.3, and the chapter on personality testing and assessment).
• American Mensa. Testing page. Read October 29, 2026.
• Chojnowski D. Three Ways to Read Dąbrowski's Theory. It Is Not All Flat Here. Constructing a Neo-Dąbrowskian Approach. Annales Universitatis Mariae Curie-Skłodowska, sectio J, Paedagogia-Psychologia, 2023, volume 36, issue 4, pages 261 to 279.
• De Bondt N and Van Petegem P. Psychometric Evaluation of the Overexcitability Questionnaire-Two Applying Bayesian Structural Equation Modeling (BSEM) and Multiple-Group BSEM-Based Alignment with Approximate Measurement Invariance. Frontiers in Psychology, 2015, volume 6, article 1963.
• Falk R F, Lind S, Miller N B, Piechowski M M and Silverman L K. The Overexcitability Questionnaire-Two (OEQ-II): Manual, Scoring System, and Questionnaire. Denver, CO: Institute for the Study of Advanced Development, 1999. Cited as listed by De Bondt and Van Petegem (2015); the manual was not opened.
• Fries J, Baudson T G, Kovacs K and Pietschnig J. Bright, but allergic and neurotic? A critical investigation of the "overexcitable genius" hypothesis. Frontiers in Psychology, 2022, volume 13, article 1051910.
• Gifted Development Center. Overexcitability Questionnaire-Two (OEQ-II), store page. Read October 29, 2026.
• Karpinski R I, Kinase Kolb A M, Tetreault N A and Borowski T B. High intelligence: A risk factor for psychological and physiological overexcitabilities. Intelligence, 2018, volume 66, pages 8 to 23. Cited by title; its design is described here only as Fries and colleagues describe it.
• Mendaglio S and Tillier W. Dabrowski's Theory of Positive Disintegration and Giftedness: Overexcitability Research Findings. Journal for the Education of the Gifted, 2006, volume 30, issue 1, pages 68 to 87.
• Olszewski-Kubilius P, Steenbergen-Hu S, Calvert E, Richert Corwith S and Bright S. A Meta-Analysis of Research on the Relationship Between Overexcitabilities and Giftedness. Gifted Child Quarterly, 2026, volume 70, issue 2, pages 111 to 138 (published online October 27, 2025; record checked on Crossref and OpenAlex on October 29, 2026).
• Pearson Assessments. Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale, Fifth Edition (WAIS-5) product page. Read October 29, 2026.
• Vuyk M A, Krieshok T S and Kerr B A. Openness to Experience Rather Than Overexcitabilities. Gifted Child Quarterly, 2016, volume 60, issue 3, pages 192 to 211.
• Winkler D and Voight A. Giftedness and Overexcitability. Gifted Child Quarterly, 2016, volume 60, issue 4, pages 243 to 257.

14 Frequently Asked Questions