Giftedness and social adjustment: evidence supporting the resilience approach in Spanish‐speaking children and adolescents

Abstract

Do gifted students adjust poorly to their social environment? There are currently two competing positions: one that sustains that giftedness is by itself a risk factor for social adaptation, and another that holds that high cognitive abilities involve distinctive features that are protective and hence increase individual resilience. Empirical support has been provided for both positions. This paper provides data from a study performed with 50 Spanish‐speaking gifted children and adolescents using a comparison group of 50 average‐ability peers matched by sex and chronological age. The results show no significant differences between gifted students and their peers on global measures of adjustment. Instead, they suggest that gifted students are neither significantly more poorly nor better adjusted than their peers during different age periods. Our analysis of the results provides moderate support for the resilience position.

Keywords:

• gifted
• high abilities
• social adjustment
• resilience

Acknowledgements

This study was supported by a grant from the Government of Chile (Beca Presidente de la República para Estudios en el Extranjero, MIDEPLAN) for the first author’s doctoral studies at the Faculty of Psychology, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, and by a grant from Universidad Autónoma de Madrid for a research stay a the University of Nijmegen, Netherlands. Special thanks are given to the members of the Center for the Study of Giftedness at the University of Nijmegen, especially Dr Franz Mönks and Dr Lianne Hoogeven, for their insightful views during the first author’s research stay. Grant Number 11080055 from FONDECYT supported preparation of this paper.