Abstract

The aim of the study was to understand the components associated with the types of perfectionism described as adaptive/healthy, maladaptive/unhealthy or non-perfectionism, which could offer positive or negative aspects to improve excellence and well-being, exploring the number and content of the latent perfectionism structure as a multidimensional construct in a sample of High Intellectual Abilities (HIA) students. Links with Positive and Negative perfectionism were also compared across perfectionism latent profiles. A total of n=137 HIA students, mean age 13.77 years (SD=1.99), participated in a survey. The Almost Perfect Scale Revised (APS-R) and Positive and Negative Perfectionism Scale-12 (PNPS-12) were used. Results obtained showed three latent classes (LC): ‘Unhealthy’ (LC1), ‘Healthy’ (LC2) and ‘No perfectionism’ (LC3). LC1 showed high scores on Discrepancy subscales but low in Order and High Standards. LC2 displayed higher scores on High Standards and Order. LC3 displayed low scores across all perfectionism facets. Statistically significant differences were found across latent profiles in almost all perfectionism features. Different patterns of associations with Positive and Negative perfectionism were obtained across latent profiles. These findings address the latent structure of perfectionisms in HIA students and allow us to delimit, analyze, and understand the tentative latent profiles within the HIA arena.

Abstract

During the last decades, high intellectual abilities have been revealed as a decisive curricular factor that evidences the need to adapt content to students' characteristics. In Spain, various autonomous communities have designed programs that, through extraordinary activities, seek to respond to this demand and provide talented students with the appropriate context for the development and strengthening of their skills. In the case of Madrid, this proposal includes private involvement of an entrepreneurial nature that has demonstrated the possible connection between the two environments when considering the labor asset, fundamentally oriented to the resolution of projects by adolescent subjects with above average cognitive capacities. This research has examined, by means of a 180º questionnaire completed by 342 subjects (comprised of parents and skilled children, teachers and classmates) in seven Madrid schools, the possibility of identifying the ‘eagerness to achieve’ competence, considering that its early distinction enables its development in educational contexts and the training of students in order to promote individuals who focus their professional work towards the completion of assigned activities. The results obtained have also made it possible to draw up a generic profile of the talented student by combining his or her own assessments and those of his or her environment, and to recognize their most highly valued inherent aptitudes as well as those least valued.