Neural Differences in Gifted Students: Impacts on Learning and Everyday Functioning

Previous studies have shown that gifted students differ from their typically developing peers in cortical structures, neural connectivity, and cognitive processing. While these structural differences may reflect enhanced learning performance on specific, quantitative school assessments, whether such differences were observable in flexible, unstructured, and non-standardized real-world contexts or professional settings remains unclear. This study employed a purposeful sampling method, interviewing eight mathematically gifted individuals aged 20 to 29. The result showed gifted individuals demonstrated exceptional metacognitive abilities, enabling them to recognize their strengths and weaknesses and adapt rapidly to environmental demands by employing diverse strategies.