Looking to set its own standards for measuring intelligence, Turkey launched its own intelligence test. The Anadolu-Sak Intelligence Scale (ASIS) was introduced yesterday in Eskişehir, the very city it was developed. The project is the brainchild of academics led by Professor Uğur Sak and funded by Anadolu University in Eskişehir.

Veysel Öztürk, a senior official from the National Ministry of Education, which supported the project, said it was important to develop an intelligence scale compatible with Turkish culture. "Turkey has been taking important steps for measuring intelligence in the past two years but it has long lagged on testing gifted children and providing education catering to their needs," he said.

Sak said Turkey had scaled the intelligence of 316,000 children in one year to detect gifted children, a figure way behind developed countries.

ASIS, which has seven sub-scales and eight profile scores, evaluates participants on verbal and visual potential, verbal reasoning, visual-spatial reasoning, working memory capacity, verbal short-term memory, visual-spatial working memory and general intelligence.

The National Ministry of Education and a nongovernmental organization already launched a project to track down children with high IQs and set up education centers that would cater to their high intelligence.