Talent Development in Children and Adolescents: Roles of Gifted Characteristics, Self-efficacy, and Life Satisfaction

This session will briefly share findings of the relationships among gifted characteristics, self-efficacy and life satisfaction in participants of the Jockey Club “Giftedness Into Flourishing Talents”(Project GIFT).1 To enhance parents and teachers’ understanding of personal characteristics and needs, the research team investigated 11 dimensions of gifted characteristics, including motivation, communication skills, interest, problem solving abilities, imagination/creativity, memory, exploration, insight, reason, humour and leadership. The most distinctive characteristics differentiating gifted learners are motivation, communication skills, interest, problem solving abilities, exploration and insight. These gifted characteristics have moderately positive correlations with all the domains of multiple intelligences, namely linguistic, musical, logical and mathematic, spatial, bodily/ kinesthetic, intrapersonal, interpersonal, and natural intelligence. These gifted characteristics also correlated moderately and positively with all the subscales of psychological wellbeing, namely autonomy, environmental mastery, personal development, positive relationship, meaning of life, and self-acceptance. In other words, student who have higher gifted characteristics also have higher scores in psychological wellbeing.