Psychosocial aspects of the development of gifted underachievers: Review and implications

Abstract

Gifted underachievers are children who display a discrepancy between high achievement and actual performance. Focusing on gifted children with a long-standing pattern of underachievement not explicable in terms of learning disability, this paper adopts a developmental perspective to the problem of gifted underachievement. Literature is reviewed on the affective development of gifted underachievers and the environmental factors which may foster or diminish success in school. It is argued that cognitive and affective variables do not operate independently and should not be considered in isolation from the environmental context of development. Further, gifted underachievers are situation-specif icand highly variable. Finally, implications for intervention are discussed in light of the need to view children's development not as a dichotomy of cognitive and affective change but holistically, as a complex interaction of child and environment.