This issue of the High Ability Studies focuses from various perspectives on two topics: Sports and emotions. Martin, Ewing, and Oregon are interested in the role of specialization of athletes. In line with recent findings in skill development in the arts and in the academics, they find that early specialization is not required for an elite level performance. In the second article on sports, Tedesqui and Young investigated grit which received much attention in recent research. The authors summarized the results of their study that grit enables athletes to persist with practice activities which are crucial in expert sport development.
In an article on emotions, Godor and Szymanski address an issue that has stirred up much controversy lately: Harmony theory posits that gifted students are well adjusted and successful in life, whereas disharmony theory maintains that giftedness forms a threat to a harmonious development. Analyzing PISA 2012 data, the authors found no evidence of gifted students being lonelier compared to non-gifted students. Indeed, the vast majority reported equal or higher levels of belonging. Thus, the results were clearly more concordant with harmony theory. In a highly interesting study, Hornstra, van der Veen, and Peetsma examined the effects of full-time and part-time high ability programs on high ability students’ achievement emotions. Main findings were that students, who attended full-time high ability programs, did not report more positive achievement emotions compared to students of similar ability levels within regular education. However, students in part-time programs experienced more positive and less negative emotions during the part-time program.
The concept of over-excitabilities has recently been questioned by some authors. However, De Bondt and Van Petegem present a study in which over-excitability explains variations in learning patterns ranging from 3.3% for reproduction-directed learning to impressive 46.1% for meaning-directed learning. Furthermore, the authors found evidence for including emotion dynamics in the study of the learning process.
Araújo, Cruz, and Almeida conducted a study with six outstanding scientists. Some of the key findings are that emotion regulation, flexible coping, and goal setting were identified as particularly important in dealing with rejections, setbacks, and team management issues.
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