| Abstract [eng] |
For a long time gifted children in Lithuania did not get the needed attention to their problems. It may be due to the popular belief that gifted pupils are intelligent enough to cope with their problems on their own. Though quite a few researchers claim (Bland and Sowa, 1994; Reis and Renzulli, 2004; Richards, Encel and Shute, 2003), that gifted are as good as the rest of population or even better at dealing with their psychosocial environment, the data in this domain remain controversial – a number of investigators suggest (Webb, 1984; McCallister ir Nash, 1996; Fiedler, 1999), that intellectually gifted children may face serious psychological problems, such as failure to adjust to peer groups or even depression. As it is a group of exceptional children, we decided, that the usual quantitative methods would not be suitable to evaluate their problems comprehensively, so we chose a qualitative method of semi-structured interview to evaluate the patterns of gifted children’s psychosocial adjustment in adolescence. It gives the opportunity to have a look at the phenomena through the respondent’s eyes – the way he sees and feels it. So the objective of this study is to identify those adolescents, who are highly intellectually gifted and to evaluate their psychosocial adaptation at school, in peer group and family. First, the IQ’s of nineteen pupils were assessed using WISC-III (Wechsler intelligence scale for children; in year 2002 adapted in Lithuania), then a semi-structured interview was performed with those, whose results met the criteria of high intellectual abilities. After the analysis of data was complete, the following results emerged: the participants of this study face the usual problems of adolescents as well as specific difficulties, influenced by their exceptionality. |
