Overexcitabilities of Intellectually and Artistically Gifted Children and Youth

The objective of this study was to examine the psychometric characteristics of the Lithuanian version of the Overexcitability Questionnaire-II (OEQ-II) [1] and to use this instrument for a comparison of overexcitabilities (OEs) between groups of students with different abilities. The five overexcitabilities (OEs: psychomotor, sensual, emotional, imaginational and intellectual) are found in Dabrowski's Theory of Positive Disintegration [2]. Participants included 569 students aged from 11 to 26. The selection of intellectually giftedand average ability groups was based on the Raven's Progressive Matrices' [3;4] scores. The artistically gifted group consisted of 121 pupils from the National M. K. Ciurlionis School of Art. The results of this study have a few implications. Firstly, the Lithuanian version of the OEQ-II has good psychometric properties and can be used for measuring the OEs. Secondly, intellectually gifted students scored significantly higher on sensual, imaginational and intellectual overexcitabilities than those of average ability; pupils of Art School scored higher than their counterparts of average ability on sensual, imaginational, intellectual and emotional OEs. Finally, the artistically gifted showed higher scores on sensual and emotional OEs when compared to the intellectually gifted.