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This article explores some of the common causes and solutions to perfectionism in gifted children. We highlight practical implications from studies examining perfectionism in gifted students, including how implicit theories of intelligence (e.g., mindset) relate to perfectionism. Specific strategies are shared to guide gifted children toward a mindful pursuit of excellence in which they are self-aware of how their thoughts, emotions, and beliefs about ability influence their behaviors in achieving a high standard. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An article on the educational and social struggles of gifted children is presented. The author examines the nature of intelligence, discusses the statistical distribution of high intellect, and offers some traditional characteristics of gifted children, including emotional hypersensitivity, hyperactivity, and vocal outbursts.

Abstract: Superior response inhibition is an essential component of the advanced cognitive abilities of gifted children. This study investigated response inhibition in intellectually gifted children by recording event-related brain potentials (ERPs) during a Go/NoGo task. Fifteen intellectually gifted children and 15 intellectually average children participated. Our present findings showed that intellectually gifted children had shorter Go-P3 latency, indicating faster processing of Go stimuli, a finding consistent with previous studies. We focused on the two inhibition-related components, NoGo-N2 and NoGo-P3. The results showed that NoGo-P3 latency was shorter for intellectually gifted children compared to their average peers. N2 latency did not indicate the intelligence difference. These results suggested that intellectually gifted children showed faster inhibition when dealing with NoGo stimuli, and this superiority came from the later stages of inhibition, i.e., response evaluation or the success of inhibiting a response, as indexed by the shorter P3 latency. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Objective: It is widely believed among professionals and laity that genius is born and not made. However, the early and still-influential statistical studies of Frances Galton on the inheritance of genius have neither been supported nor definitively refuted. This study empirically assesses the hereditary transmission hypothesis.Methods: We collected family background data on 50 Nobel Prize laureates in literature, 31 Booker Prize awardees, 135 Pulitzer Prize winners, and 20 National Book and National Book Critics Circle awardees. We compared these for incidence of occupational inheritance (that is, same parent-child occupations) with a matching group of 392 eminent persons in noncreative occupations; for predominant occupation type, we also compared subject data with data for 560 high-IQ nonprizewinners, as well as with general population occupational data.Results: Incidence of one or both parents in the same occupation was only 1% for literary prizewinners but 16% for eminent noncreative persons (P < 0.0001). The predominant (76%) family background constellation for prizewinners consisted of parent-child sex congruency either in applied-equivalent occupations requiring language, persuasion, or artisan skills (P < 0.0001, compared with control subjects) or in unrelated occupations with unfulfilled wishes for creative expression.Conclusions: Outstanding literary prizewinners do not manifest direct inheritance of creativity from their parents; instead, parents and children of the same sex are predominantly in applied-equivalent or performance occupations and have unfulfilled creative wishes. We suggest that early developmental influences on child motivation involve identification and competition with the parent of the same sex. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Describes an exploratory study of the understanding of intelligence by gifted children. Involvement of conceptual thought in the social domain; Synthesis with external factors of feelings and judgments about intelligence; Age as a factor indicated from a developmental progression of children's understanding.

It is common that intellectually gifted children--that is, children with an IQ ≥ 130--are referred to paediatric or child neuropsychiatry clinics for socio-emotional problems and/or school underachievement or maladjustment. These clinically-referred children with intellectual giftedness are thought to typically display internalizing problems (i.e., self-focused problems reflecting overcontrol of emotion and behavior), and to be more behaviorally impaired when "highly" gifted (IQ ≥ 145) or displaying developmental asynchrony (i.e., a heterogeneous developmental pattern, reflected in a significant verbal-performance discrepancy on IQ tests). We tested all these assumptions in 143 clinically-referred gifted children aged 8 to 12, using Wechsler's intelligence profile and the Child Behavior Checklist. Compared to a normative sample, gifted children displayed increased behavioral problems in the whole symptomatic range. Internalizing problems did not predominate over externalizing ones (i.e., acted-out problems, reflecting undercontrol of emotion and behavior), revealing a symptomatic nature of behavioral syndromes more severe than expected. "Highly gifted" children did not display more behavioral problems than the "low gifted." Gifted children with a significant verbal-performance discrepancy displayed more externalizing problems and mixed behavioral syndromes than gifted children without such a discrepancy. These results suggest that developmental asynchrony matters when examining emotional and behavioral problems in gifted children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]