Behavior Problems of Gifted and Nongifted Elementary School Girls and Boys

Abstract

A most interesting controversy related to educating the gifted is the social-personal functioning of this group. As reviews commonly point out, some early positions taken were that genius often is accompanied by maladjustment (e.g., Lombroso, 1891; see Callahan,1981; Getzels & Dillon, 1973). Yet the opposite perspective was also advocated... that gifted persons tend to experience superior social and personal adjustment (Cox, 1926; Hollingworth, 1927, Terman, 1925). On balance, research on the adjustment of gifted young-sters has tended to support the latter view. Most of this research has relied heavily or even entirely on self-report methods of assessing personal adjustment and functioning. Thus, gifted children tend to do better than nongifted peers on projective assessments of intrapsychic status (e.g., Gal-