Abstract

There is a growing interest in the education of gifted children nation-wide. The present study was performed to find out characteristics of students who are receiving special education as gifted using a new psychological inventory which measures the temperament and character separately. We compared students who have been selected for their talent in math and science with students who do well academically. Academic competence was operationally defined by grades or by IQ. Gifted children are usually thought to be characterized by an innate ability, and it was expected that there would be some difference between temperaments of the gifted group and those of the academically competent group. However, there was no significant difference between the two groups not only in their temperaments, but also in other sub-scales of character. This result suggests that in spite of the extensive effort and cost involved in the selection process, the children who are currently selected as gifted show no distinction when compared to academically competent students. Based on the results some practical suggestions were made in order to improve the selection of the gifted children.