High Intellectual Potential Research Articles

LEISURE ACTIVITIES AS PREDICTORS OF GIFTEDNESS

Abstract The investigation of leisure time activities through lifespan analysis has revealed the importance of such activities in the prediction of later life achievements and creative products. They may be more reliable predictors of future performance than IQs, creativity test scores or school achievement. In the present paper creative leisure time activities are considered to be creative products. A total of 192 fifteen year old academic secondary school students were involved in the study: Creative leisure time inventories were filled out, Raven Advanced Progressive Matrices administered, and school grades recorded. Results indicated that differences in leisure time inventory scores between boys and girls with high intellectual potential were smaller than those of students with average potential. Girls were overrepresented in the “schoolhouse gifted” group, but in the “creative gifted” and “intellectually gifted” groups the ratio of girls and boys was balanced.

Causal Attributions of Underachieving Gifted, Achieving Gifted, and Nongifted Students

Underachievement among students with high intellectual potential is of increasing concern to educators and psychologists working with and/or studying this population. Although research has demonstrated a link between perceived control and motivation to achieve among elementary students, very little research has employed this variable in attempts to identify criterial characteristics of underachieving gifted children and youth. The study compared the mean locus of control and attribution scores of elementary students (75 males and 62 females) who were classified as underachieving gifted (21 males and 15 females), or nongifted (31 males, 31 females), or achieving gifted (23 males, 16 females). Results indicate that mean attribution scores for underachieving gifted students were significantly higher for ability in success situations than for achieving gifted or nongifted students. In contrast, underachieving gifted and nongifted students' mean scores were significantly higher for externality and luck in failure situations than their achieving gifted peers. Attribution retraining strategies, particularly those encouraging persistence and learning from failures, are recommended for underachieving-gifted students.

Publication indicators of relative research efforts in physics subfields

AbstractIndicators of research activity are suggested in order to evaluate the relative research efforts within the subfields of physics in a given country and in relation to the world average. The comparison of the internal activity indicators of various countries show that the self‐regulating mechanism of scientific research tends to keep an even distribution of efforts in each of the physics subfields on a worldwide scale. Countries of high and medium economic and intellectual potential showing significant deviation in research efforts from the general group behavior were selected by an expectation methodology.

26 PSYCHOLOGICAL STUDY IN PRECOCIOUS PUBERTY

Male and female precocious puberty were studied through clinical and laboratory data. Intelligence and personality were analyzed and family orientation was given whenever necessary. The psychological study (WISC) shows that these children have superior IQ when compared with other children of same social and cultural conditions. Concerning to the verbal subtests, it became clear that those scores are higher than the ones of the performance subtests, and the similarity subtests' score is above average - meaning a higher intelligence potential as well. The projective tests (Rorschach - Cat) indicated that those children have sexual relationship and body image problems. Mother's interviews showed also problems with the mother-child relationship, where parents treated the child either as a little adult or by overprotecting them, in spite of their high intellectual potential.