Many faces of a gifted personality: characteristics along a complex gifted spectrum

This article will explore previous attempts to categorise gifted children according to certain types, and examine attempts to find common gifted characteristics, including characteristics that may have resulted from adverse environmental and other influences affecting attachment security. The discussion will highlight the difficulty in identifying gifted children who have associated disorders, and propose that disorders can affect core gifted characteristics. If this were the case, then seemingly discrepant and unexpected behaviours in some gifted children may be explained by such disorders. It will be argued that characteristics can be reliably used to initially screen children for both giftedness and for more commonly associated disorders, including anxiety and ADHD. A screening tool, The Spectrum of Gifted Characteristics, includes characteristics of disorders more frequently associated with giftedness, characteristics associated with attachment, and predicted gifted characteristics when combined with separate disorders and attachment styles.