Personal Characteristics Of High Ability Adolescents With Different Levels Of Academic Achievement

Abstract

The study aimed to examine the cognitive and non-cognitive personal characteristics in high ability adolescents with excellent and below the average academic achievements, in comparing to their typically developing peers. Two groups of secondary school students participated (ages 11 through 13 years, boys and girls equally). The first group included 160 high ability students, selected with the teachers ratings and the cognitive abilities tests. The second group included 120 unselected students of the whole classes. We used the following methods: Teachers Ratings of Intelligence; Cognitive Abilities Tests, including the verbal, quantitative, and non-verbal scales; Questionnaires of Quest for Knowledge, Hope for Success, Fear of Failure, General and Academic Self Concept, Anxiety, and Academic Achievements (school grades). The results obtained revealed the significant differences of high ability students from their ordinary peers in cognitive and non-cognitive personal characteristics, including superiority in academic success. However, although the cognitive abilities scores are recognized as useful predictors of academic performance, some of gifted students, mostly boys, showed a discrepancy between actual and expected levels of academic achievements and were identified as underachievers. In spite of high tested cognitive abilities, the performance and personality characteristics of the underachievers were closed to that in the ordinary students. The research data analysis had shown that solving problems of the gifted underachievers calls for the new approaches both to revealing the high ability adolescents having difficulties in their study and to establishing certain strategies for overcoming such difficulties.