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Dance/Movement Therapy: A Proposed Intervention For Meeting The Unique Psychosocial Needs Of Highly Gifted Children, Krista Brittain

Graduate School of Professional Psychology: Doctoral Papers and Masters Projects

This paper will demonstrate that the literature suggests and experts observe that intellectually gifted children, children with exceptional cognitive abilities, experience a unique set of psychological, social, and developmental stressors. Research has demonstrated that individuals with intelligence quotient (IQ) scores far above the mean tend to experience greater socio-emotional difficulty than their average-intelligence peers (Gross, 2002). For some gifted children the challenges and stressors they face may lead to areas of difficulty, including emotional functioning (including heightened emotional intensity, sometimes described as emotional overexcitability), affect regulation. development of the self (including perfectionism) and int.erpersonal functioning. As a result, some highly …