Qualitative changes of gifted youth personality potential in intensive education conditions

Development of a gifted child potential isan issue of the day for educational psychology and pedagogics. Gifted children are able to obtain considerable results in different cognitiveactivities, but they have many difficulties in physical development, as well as in emotional and communicative spheres. In general itleads to disharmonious development, and may result in higher proneness to conflicts, seclusion and social maladjustment. Thus, it is reasonableto put gifted children into the high-risk group and provide them with special educational conditions. The present-day educational systemis mainly focused on stirring up the cognitive level of psyche. Intensification of educational programs combined with specific complicationsof gifted children development may lead to an uncontrollable increase of school load, and have negative impact on the overall potentialof the gifted child personality. With regards to the mentioned above, the purpose of our research is to define asthenia level of gifted children,who undergo intensive training in Irkutsk State University lyceum. The research also studies psychomotor, intellectual, emotional andcommunicative personality factors of gifted children, both asthenic and non-asthenic. The collected data show that more than 50% childrenare amenable to asthenia of different intensity. The gifted children with asthenia are characterized with the average level of communicativeneeds, smaller networks of contacts and, in general, greater slowness than gifted children without asthenia. We also observed correlationsbetween asthenia and psychomotor, intellectual activity in this group. It may lead gifted children with asthenia to poor school results andlack of success. The more sociable, emotionally sensitive these children are, the lower their vegetative resources are. Gifted children, whodo not have asthenia, on the contrary, tend to avoid emotional interaction and keep communication formal. Probably, it allows their psycheto work in the energy-saving mode and keep the optimum level of work capacity. But, chronic psycho-emotional effort creates hazard ofmodification of personality structure and reduces the potential of a gifted child.

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