Special personality profiles of gifted people in counseling
A key personality trait of cognitively gifted children and young people is their above-average intelligence. Accordingly, cognitive support plays an important role in gifted education. This support should also prevent learning and performance difficulties from occurring due to underchallenge.
In addition to high intelligence, other personality traits have been identified over the course of a 100-year research tradition that are particularly relevant for describing the emotional development of gifted individuals, including the particular intensity of stimulus processing and a high level of emotional sensitivity. It has also been pointed out that social and emotional development is not necessarily also above average. This developmental discrepancy is referred to as “asynchronous development”. Like high sensitivity and intensity, it can be experienced as problematic by gifted people.
The research project outlined here serves to historically derive these components and make them manageable for advising parents and teachers.
- Keywords
- Gifted education, counseling, socio-emotional development, high sensitivity, asynchronous development
- Duration
- 01/01/2018 - Until further notice
- University institutions
- Institute of Special Education, Department of Psychology in the Field of Special Education
Key facts
Description
While the specific learning needs of gifted children are addressed in school-based gifted education, knowledge about the specific social-emotional needs of gifted children and adolescents is less widespread. The American psychologist Linda Kreger Silverman has developed a diagnostic questionnaire for parents and teachers based on clinical observations and empirical studies, the "Characteristics of giftedness Scale" (last revised version from 1989), in which various facets of intensity and sensitivity are recorded in addition to cognitive abilities.
The aim of this research project is to create the conditions for the scientifically robust and sustainable use of a German version of the questionnaire. The aim of the study is to define the extremely concise characteristics in the "Scales" as concretely as possible for diagnostic applicability. To this end, they must be traced back to their scientific basis. Therefore, philological-historical methods will be used to uncover the considerations that led to the formulation of the characteristics. The next step is to examine how the concepts behind the succinctly formulated "characteristics" of the lists can be incorporated into current educational practice. To this end, a German version of the questionnaire will be presented to parents of gifted children (members of the "German Society for the Highly Gifted Child") and teachers working in the field of gifted education.
The study forms an essential basis of argumentation for the area of "personality diagnostics and counseling for teachers and parents" within the planned counseling center, which is being set up together with Prof. Dr. Armin Castello and Dipl.-Psych. Torsten Joél (www.begabung-sh.de).