The Psychological Well-Being of Early Identified Gifted Children

Abstract

This study examined the psychological well-being of gifted primary school children. From a screening sample of 233 children in Grades 1 and 2 across five schools in the Netherlands, 35 children achieving high scores on two out of three selection criteria (teacher nomination, creativity, and nonverbal reasoning ability) and 34 typically developing children were selected to participate in the study. Combinations of grouping criteria were used to create different subsamples within the gifted sample. In general, the differences in well-being between the gifted and the comparison group were relatively small, although the gifted children experienced lower self-worth and social acceptance. In contrast, within the sample of gifted children, some differences were found between selected subgroups. Highly creative gifted children experienced lower feelings of well-being than less creative gifted children, while the reverse was true for children who were nominated by their teacher. Additionally, high-performing gifted children showed higher psychological well-being than underachievers.