Despite the various studies on gifted children and adolescents, many received ideas persist in terms of their cognitive and emotional competence (Gilloots, 2016, p. 245) which can be therapeutically deleterious (Gilloots, 2016, p. 245) but also on a school, family and social level, and increases the difficulties of adaptation while promoting psychological suffering.
Theoretical background: Concerning the psycho-affective or school troubles that adolescents with high abilities could encounter, empirical studies offer controversial results, and do not allow us to affirm that they have more problems than average childrens. Moreover, some authors (Piechowski, 1991), seem nevertheless to recognize an increased sensitivity in gifted adolescents, which he calls “emotional overexcitability”. Thus, to understand the origin of the possible psycho-affective or school disorders which gifted adolescents may be subject to, the authors were interested in their emotional competence and particularly in their emotional regulation strategies. These depend on environmental and biological factors, including the maturation of the prefrontal cortex. Indeed, emotional skills, and particularly emotional regulation, are dependent on executive functions (selective attention, inhibition capacities) (Pichon & Vuilleumier, 2011; Le Vigouroux, 2016). MRI studies have been able to show that gifted children and adolescents have better cerebral development with better functional connectivity, an accelerated conduction velocity, which gives them more efficient executive functions (Miller 1994, cited by Jambaqué, 2004).
Aim: Insofar as these different studies present diverse methodological biases (recruitment of gifted children/adolescents within specialized schools, absence of a control group), and the choice of material which did not really allow the evaluation of their emotional information processing, we conducted a study trying to take these different aspects into account. The objective was, on the one hand, to verify the presence of a greater emotional overexcitability in gifted adolescents compared to average adolescents. But also, to observe if the intelligence quotient (here, the Fluid Reasoning Index (FRI)) favored the processing (selective attention, inhibition capacities) of cognitive and emotional information.
Methods: We conducted a study with a sample of 107 young gifted and non-gifted adolescents aged 11-13 years. The first group consisted of 81 average adolescents (control group) and the other group comprised 26 adolescents (18 labeled gifted adolescents and 8 gifted adolescents having obtained performances beyond the 90th percentile in the fluid reasoning tests (Matrix and Balance of the WISC-V)). To highlight the emotional overexcitability described in the literature, we used the overexcitability questionnaire (OEQ-II). In order to account for their cognitive and emotional processing (selective attention, inhibition, resistance to interference), we used a classic Stroop task and an emotional Stroop task. Participants were all given the same tasks and performed them in the same order.
Results: The results confirmed the presence of greater emotional overexcitability in gifted adolescents compared to average adolescents. Although a better management of cognitive interference could be demonstrated in gifted subjects compared to the control group, our results did not make it possible to make this observation for emotional information.
Discussion: This outcome leads to discussing the direct link between high intellectual potential and the ability to process emotional information, which here seems dependent on other more independent factors (Roy, 2015; Bush, Luu & Posner 2000), that remain to be explored. Even so their emotional processing does not come close enough to that observed in clinical populations, which suggests that they are not necessarily more prone to psycho-affective disorders than non gifted individuals.
Limitations: Nevertheless, several limitations should be noted within our study and which could have affected our results: our sample of gifted participants was too small, and we had not carried out a pre-test. Also, we had chosen, for practical and theoretical reasons, to consider participants as “gifted” when they obtained performances beyond the 90th percentile in the fluid reasoning tests (Matrix and Balance of the WISC-V). However, the majority of studies that focus on showing that High Ability children have better executive functions use participants who have an IQ above 130 (Wechsler, 2016). And we should, perhaps, have added subtests of crystallized intelligence (vocabulary and comprehension) in order to make comparisons between subjects with High Verbal Potential (high VCI) and those with high fluid intelligence. Indeed, the presence of higher anxiety in High Potential with high VCI has been observed (Kermarrec et al, 2020).
Key Words: Giftedness ; Fluid intelligence ; Inhibition process ; Emotion ; Cognition ; Attention ; Executive function ; Stroop Effects, Interference ; Overexcitability