Understanding Psychological Socio-Emotional Issues Among Gifted and Talented Students: Implication to Counseling Services

Socio-emotional issues are synonym with gifted and talented children due to the asynchronous or uneven psychological development. To understand socio-emotional issues faced by the gifted learners is important towards their affective development and emotional stability. This study aims to identify the aspects of socio-emotional issues among gifted and talented students. 194 students from PERMATA pintar™ National Gifted Centre, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia are randomly selected to respond to the Socio-Emotional Issues Instrument, comprises of 60 items, using 5-point Likert scale. Descriptive statistics analysis is used to determine the mean score of the studied variable. The result shows that mean of socio-emotional issues is moderate (2.71, sp value: 7.39). From ten components of socio-emotional issues studied, two components were found to have higher mean; namely social justice (4.13) and perfectionism (3.12). Meanwhile, for other components such as anxiety, procrastination, motivation, emotion, self-concept, social pressure, underachievement, and family relationship the mean is at a moderate level. Findings of this study indicates that socio-emotional issue exists among gifted students in Malaysia. It also reflects the need of supportive learning environment by the teachers, schools’ counsellors, and community are crucial in helping gifted and talented children to understand and cope with their socio-emotional challenges. School counsellors need the skills and competencies to develop effective interventions in helping gifted students with their asynchronous development.