History of giftedness research
“Gifted individuals see and experience the world uniquely. They have unique biology, from their brain maps to their genetics to their sensory processing to their emotional processing to their biorhythms.” –Nicole Tetreault
During the last century, giftedness research was relatively underdeveloped, with just a handful of psychologists and educational researchers exploring the area. These pioneers studied many different forms of giftedness, from intellectual talent to musical and artistic prodigies. Much of the historical research focused on identifying the gifted individual, describing their education, and the promising ideas and theories they created.
Giftedness research over the past 40 years has become a significant and influential area of psychology. In addition to exploring long-established concepts and issues, modern researchers have also focused on some new and exciting questions. This diversity of topics belies both the fact that the research community is still quite small and that it is not always easy to identify key themes within the giftedness field.
Most accounts of giftedness start with Francis Galton, who is credited with creating the term as well as the concept. However, from a historical perspective, the notion of giftedness can be traced back many centuries. Francis Galton (1869) in his book “Hereditary Genius” argued that achievement, particularly in the areas of the arts and science, was associated with a person’s family and their curiosity, energy, and ability. These principles of achievement were heritable.
Thanks to his cousin, Charles Darwin, Galton was aware of the possibility of collecting data about the biological and physical characteristics of gifted and talented people and of using this data to establish their relative intellectual and creative abilities. Galton devised a questionnaire that he sent to friends throughout Europe. This survey, and others that followed, indicated that, as predicted, there were numerous talented individuals in society.
The unique biology of gifted individuals
It should come as no surprise that gifted individuals have unique biology. Those who are truly gifted not only have advanced cognitive skills, but have other qualities such as creativity, perseverance, and generally thrive outside the formal classroom, so it should be obvious that there is “something else” going on besides just advanced levels of knowledge. Creativity in particular is often under-recognized and rarely studied, but remains one of the primary defining characteristics of truly gifted individuals, as documented by many different research studies conducted over the past 25+ years.
Creativity and problem-solving activities unleash unique brain processes, with outward expression involving the prefrontal cortex, association areas, and the limbic system structures of the amygdala, hippocampus, thalamus, and hypothalamus. It is the frontal cortex that manages executive functions such as judgment and problem-solving, and the limbic structures that make creativity not only possible but satisfying and pleasurable as well.
The association areas make the “links” between the formation of various pieces of information and their activation patterns, thus linking together and enabling the discharge of related memory associations. In studies of human anatomical dissections, in fact, the “associational pathways” which are carried throughout the neocortex’s six layers by layer V cells, show marked differences in numbers and amounts of axonal formations among non-gifted, talented, and truly gifted individuals. This data, provided by the physical structure of the brain in various humans, is simply the most straightforward and irrefutable evidence that under ordinary physical circumstances is able to document the marked differences in brain biology of truly gifted and talented individuals (Wood & Laycraft, 2020).
Neurological differences
Under their brain’s accelerated neural development, gifted individuals possess an innate ability to process vast amounts of data with astonishing rapidity and make trenchant judgments. The brain of gifted toddlers develops into a complexity that is reminiscent of that of the average 8-year old. The processes that help to define a gifted individual as having a “fast brain” in part means that they literally think faster. The brains of gifted individuals process information two to three times faster than the brains of average individuals; awakened with greater frequency, the synapses of the gifted individuals also function at supersonic speed. To some scientists, this rapid mentalizing is concomitant with strong neural networks that can be activated simultaneously, meaning that gifted individuals possess a unique capability to multitask. Even more importantly, typical brain dominance patterns are absent among gifted individuals. Instead, the left side of their brain communicates effectively with the brain’s right hemisphere, helping to foster an improved creative and intuitive process (Aubry, 2021).
The corpus callosum is, essentially, the commissure that divides or bridges the two halves of the brain. Larger in magnitude among the gifted, there is a bigger and better bridge of commissural white matter that enriches the transfer of thoughts. Additionally, children who perform at higher cognitive levels are best suited to process greater cognitive information at a single sitting. Retrieval and storage is a part of the exalted levels of cognitive performance. Students who excel on a general aptitude test have a capacious capacity that can retain a multiple of associative levels, processing the type of information that would diminish average capabilities. Furthermore, enhanced norepinephrine levels in the limbic system are more common among gifted individuals. A rapid adaptation concerning novel tasks and/or contexts is the hallmark of neurochemicals.
While an absolute understanding of the genetic factors governing traits and outcomes is not yet within our reach, scholars and researchers are slowly coming to comprehend the wide range, complexity, and context sensitivity of the genetic networks affecting cognition and learning in curious and intelligent people.
Sensory and emotional processing
As experiences and memory building lead to the formation of expertise, it is not surprising that gifted individuals’ extensive experience with specific content areas leads to unique ways to process information on both sensory and emotional levels. Perceptive skills are exceptionally well developed and they excel at the fast and accurate detection of visual, and auditory stimuli, both at the peripheral level and higher levels of processing.
The peak experiences of gifted individuals are often emotional experiences. This leads to a strong involvement of the emotional memory structure, namely the amygdala, and not only enhances sensory processing itself but also modulates the direction of information flow between memory structures in the formation of sensory percepts. In addition to the fact that amygdala activation enhances the processing of related sensory input, it also increases the probability of raising the physiological activation level. We suggest that this coupling of high proficiency in specific content areas with the experience of peak (high-stakes or highly emotional) events is a strong source of the typical overexcitability in the emotional domain observed in many gifted individuals (Grow, 2020).
The experience of gifted individuals
In the population, gifted individuals are notably the minority. Research in the field has identified a number of experiences and challenges faced by this population that differentiate it from the remaining majority of individuals. Many of these differences are associated with unique cognitive or psychiatric underpinnings.
There are recognizable differences between gifted and typical individuals in both intellectual traits and in social behavior. There exist descriptions of experiences unique to gifted individuals. As an example, The Columbus Group draws a distinction of highly advanced development and asynchronous experience, from experience qualitatively and quantitatively different than typically developing individuals. Their definition described five pieces intended to inform a raft of interests of the gifted, but none of the qualities demonstrated an increased risk for disturbance, with the exception of frustration concerning differing capabilities. Other systems also seek to describe traditional and cognitive differences (Tasca, 2024). Systemic variable lists typically include visual and auditory input differences, such as heightened and hyperacute, or auditory, or exhaustive sensory experiences during input. Such experiences often serve to tax the cognitive system of the gifted, potentially through a longer time to process particularly stimulating sensory information, such as through visual scanning, as well as or through reports of body hyperactivity or sleep deprivation in response to nonspecific high environmental demands, for example through difficulty falling asleep or frequent awakenings. In addition, several concurrently proposed differences are related to excessive and internal states.
Cognitive and emotional intensity
Gifted students exhibit an intensity often characterized by advanced levels of cognitive ability, curriculum compacting, and a resulting time available for self-initiated learning. This intensity is sometimes accompanied by a parallel or synchronous emotional intensity. It has been reported that 41% of a group of male gifted students exhibited emotional difficulties. Some engage also in negative behavior. Adolescent gifted students are more capable of adult-type thinking and are more complex than their less-able peers. Gifted males are more sensitive, empathic, considerate, and polite, as well as more intellectual, fastidious, and critical than their peers. Female students are also described as more emotionally complex, and intense, yet sensitive (Schuur, 2021).
Social and emotional challenges
Gifted children’s social groups are generally age-graded at a level above their chronological age peers, which gives them the opportunity to socialize with older children. However, such age-based friendships can break down when the social and emotional differences between the gifted child and these older friends begin to interfere with their friendships. The cognitive and emotional differences between the gifted child and age-mates are usually significant enough to destabilize the friendship. In fact, age-grade equivalence or older friendships may be injurious at this time in the life of the gifted child. The absence of group relationships at the appropriate level of the child’s social and emotional age may be associated with inappropriate guidance of the child’s behavior, the loss of age group peers’ acceptance, and peer isolation.
Another potential problem emerges from the cognitive and emotional characteristics of gifted children. They are more verbally adept and assertive, less easily manipulated, and have an accelerated understanding of health risk-taking activities. Those having significant emotional or academic resources may feel overwhelmed and act accordingly, while their ability to encompass abstract generalities may lead to the rejection of generality-based advice from adults and peers. Furthermore, the enrichment experiences of the gifted may not produce problems. For example, mental health may be stressed by such factors as early sexual maturity, emotional precocity, and emotional involvement in special relationships. Emotional development can be jeopardized by socializing with older children and seeking companionship or guidance from assigned intellectual peers. Emotional independence may result from the unhurried development of self-esteem founded on self-appreciation.
Implications for education and support
Given the biological differences in the brains, the early and multiple accelerated waves of development in the various areas of the gifted brain, affective and personal sensitivities, biologically based heightened sensitivities to external stimuli, and finally, perceiving the world with and through experiences that are often different from the average peer. Current educational culture is not usually designed to meet the special educational needs of gifted individuals. Stated in a slightly different way, considerations for peer standardization often replace the need to accept and support differences, and it seems to be why educational systems may differ in their ability or unwillingness to serve levels of exceptionality.
Gifted individuals really want and need learning to be tailored to their interests and at times unusually high ability levels. Attempting to educate and level along a non-preferred level of future life direction needing long-term focused interests is not the likely way to keep a child happy and healthy. Current educational systems are not usually capable of differentiating for these potential range of peaks in performance or even heightened sensitivities, let alone being able to deliver learning in some sort of ordered sequence because of the slowed accretion of understanding and accumulation of rich experiences that may occur before some critical age level. Educational supports for gifted individuals can be viewed as critical because it provides the opportunity for rapid, matched learning to individual talented children. Denial of the developmental needs of talented children may lead to underachievement and even worse, missed career placement or a life without passion and happiness. Based on biological diversity, it may be even worse to keep gifted individuals within a group program, in essence schooling them on the lowest performance bracket within some concept of equality while being very capable of outperforming the group by demonstration of overlapping strength areas.
Tailoring educational approaches
Certainly, the typical curriculum is often inappropriate for gifted learners. That is not to say gifted learners are beyond or different from academic standards; indeed, they are often well above them. In fact, this is a common pitfall of the typical school environment. Classroom instruction might cater to the average learner or focus inordinately on students with significant academic difficulties, and the gifted child can become bored. These children might become lazy or even act out. That behavior might lead a teacher to decide that the student does not need the education, while the student might say (or think) that school was not for her or him and that no one else saw that. If a different educational environment is not provided for these students, they often begin to develop resistance toward the curricula for their grade level.
A second challenge is that learning often becomes an act of compliance rather than an act of understanding. An environment that facilitates the development of an understanding of material is often overlooked in the typical classroom. Students understand based on a broad array of personal and social cues. They understand based on language use (structure, content, recipient/audience) and they understand based on the methods and measures they use to understand. The understanding is embedded in feedback from teachers, parents, and peers and their response to that feedback. This kind of getting feedback is not a common trait of the traditional classroom and the students who usually excel in those environments.
Mental health support
Mental health support for gifted individuals is an important aspect of counseling. A common assumption is that gifted individuals are better at everything. Therefore, they are often expected to act older than their age, are expected to fit in with older peers due to shared interests at older levels, or are surrounded by praise implying that they are fearless, translating into lower empathy from parents and mentors. The special developmental, social, and emotional concerns of gifted children construe unique counseling needs. Sensitivity to the possibility of multiple exceptionalities and the use of a highly individualized approach to talent development is required. While counseling for giftedness should adapt to new knowledge in psychology, appropriate counseling options and training programs are not widely available.
Conclusion
A vital life goal is to transform the gifted person’s natural abilities and predispositions into talents and talented performances (Gagne, 1985, 2005). Gifted and talented children one day become adults. While development, education, and life experiences affect all individuals, it is in the interactions of high ability, ability-related performance, and what can best be called wisdom that the gifted and talented individual will find happiness. Thriving begins with talent development but looks beyond high-level performance to deep satisfaction and what allows the gifted and talented to flourish across their life span, the aspects of the psychology of human strengths, subjective well-being, strength of character, integrity, wisdom, the interaction of ability–interests–accomplishments, spirituality and faith, and positive personal relationships (Sayler, 2009).
Gifted individuals require a comprehensive protocol beyond academic enrichment or conventional psychological interventions. For highly, exceptionally, and profoundly gifted individuals, this managing health and well-being (both physical and mental) is especially important, particularly if there is a desire to optimize thriving trajectories and to ensure that giftedness is regarded as a relevant element of diversity and not solely as a working concern or as a potential source of stigma.
Summary of key findings
The general consensus that gifted and talented individuals demonstrate outstanding ability must be made. They learn quickly, requiring less repetition and overlearning, and with little practice, are able to master and see patterns and connections that others are unable to see. These qualities are assumed to be underpinned by an innate high level of general intelligence, which is hypothesized to be part of a special wiring of the brain that shapes their remarkable experience of the world.
Due to their unique neurodifferences, they experience overexcitabilities that can overwhelm their capabilities. Implementing specialized psychological protocols for gifted is vital to help them achieve mental health so they can experience a happy and fulfilling life.
A general consensus regarding gifted education and career counseling for gifted individuals must be established to facilitate their transition into their careers, ensuring that both they and society benefit. Future employers need to be involved in this process to support the integration and success of gifted individuals in the workforce.
References
Wood, V. & Laycraft, K. (2020). Identify, and support highly gifted and profoundly gifted students? A literature review of the psychological development of highly-profoundly gifted individuals. Annals of Cognitive Science.
Aubry, A., Gonthier, C., & Bourdin, B. (2021). Explaining the high working memory capacity of gifted children: Contributions of processing skills and executive control. Acta psychological.
Tasca, I., Guidi, M., Turriziani, P., Mento, G., & Tarantino, V. (2024). Behavioral and socio-emotional disorders in intellectual giftedness: A systematic review. Child Psychiatry & Human Development, 55(3), 768-789.
Sayler, M.F. (2009). Gifted and Thriving: A Deeper Understanding of Meaning of GT. In: Shavinina, L.V. (eds) International Handbook on Giftedness. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-6162-2_9
Schuur, J., van Weerdenburg, M., Hoogeveen, L., & Kroesbergen, E. H. (2021). Social–emotional characteristics and adjustment of accelerated university students: A Systematic Review. Gifted Child Quarterly, 65(1), 29-51.