Academic and psychosocial perspectives on giftedness during adolescence

Abstract

Gifted students identified by the Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth who underwent academic acceleration in their educations were longitudinally compared across several domains with a group of equally gifted students who were never accelerated. The groups were matched for gender and for ability and were studied for ten years. At age 23, few significant differences were found between the groups for the individual academic and psychosocial variables studied. Both the accelerates and the nonaccelerates reported impressive academic achievements, as well as high personal satisfaction with school and self. When academic variables are considered as a group, the performance of accelerates is slightly higher than that of nonaccelerates. In both accelerated and unaccelerated groups, male students pursued mathematics/science more vigorously than did female students, but there was no differential response to acceleration on the basis of gender. The findings do not support the common concern that gifted students may be harmed by accelerative experiences.