Children with strong communication skills are considered more intelligent than those who are good at mathematics, psychologists have found.

Reading and writing skills - rather than numerical skills - were found to be the benchmark by which teachers judged a pupil's potential.

The research also suggested a teacher's perception of a child's intelligence strongly affected the child's own view of his or her ability.

Furthermore, children's understanding of each others' intelligence was found to be heavily influenced by the teacher's view, and therefore subjected to the same bias that good language skills were a sign of superior intelligence.

The findings have major implications for the education of those children who are less gifted verbally, such as deaf children and delayed readers.

The research - by Professor Terezinha Nunes of Oxford Brookes University and Dr Ursula Pretzlik of the Institute of Education - was presented to the British Psychological Society's developmental section conference in Bristol.

Their conclusions are not just limited to the UK.

Surveys of teachers carried out in India, South America and Italy reached similar conclusions, delegates at the conference heard.