Hindawi Publishing Corporation BioMed Research International Volume 2013, Article ID 540153, 7 pages http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2013/540153 Research Article Behavioral Profiles of Clinically Referred Children with Intellectual Giftedness Fabian Guénolé, 1 Jacqueline Louis, 2 Christian Creveuil, 3,4 Jean-Marc Baleyte, 1,4 Claire Montlahuc, 2 Pierre Fourneret, 2,5 and Olivier Revol 2 1 CHU de Caen, Service de Psychiatrie de l’Enfant et de l’Adolescent, avenue Clemenceau, 14033 Caen Cedex 9, France 2 Hospices Civils de Lyon, Service Hospitalo-Universitaire de Psychiatrie de l’Enfant et de l’Adolescent, Hˆ opital Femme-M` ere-Enfant, 59 boulevard Pinel, 69500 Bron, France 3 CHU de Caen, Unit´ e de Biostatistiques et de Recherche Clinique, avenue Clemenceau, 14033 Caen Cedex 9, France 4 Universit´ e de Normandie, Facult´ e de M´ edecine, avenue de la Cˆ ote de Nacre, 14032 Caen Cedex 5, France 5 Universit´ e Claude Bernard Lyon-1, Facult´ e de M´ edecine Lyon Est, 8 avenue Rockefeller, 69373 Lyon Cedex 8, France Correspondence should be addressed to Fabian Gu´ enol´ e; guenole fabian@yahoo.fr Received 21 April 2013; Revised 15 June 2013; Accepted 15 June 2013 Academic Editor: Harold K. Simon Copyright © 2013 Fabian Gu´ enol´ e et al. his is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. It is common that intellectually gited children—that is, children with an IQ ≥ 130—are referred to paediatric or child neuropsychiatry clinics for socio-emotional problems and/or school underachievement or maladjustment. hese clinically-referred children with intellectual gitedness are thought to typically display internalizing problems (i.e., self-focused problems relecting overcontrol of emotion and behavior), and to be more behaviorally impaired when “highly” gited (IQ ≥ 145) or displaying developmental asynchrony (i.e., a heterogeneous developmental pattern, relected in a signiicant verbal-performance discrepancy on IQ tests). We tested all these assumptions in 143 clinically-referred gited children aged 8 to 12, using Wechsler’s intelligence proile and the Child Behavior Checklist. Compared to a normative sample, gited children displayed increased behavioral problems in the whole symptomatic range. Internalizing problems did not predominate over externalizing ones (i.e., acted-out problems, relecting undercontrol of emotion and behavior), revealing a symptomatic nature of behavioral syndromes more severe than expected. “Highly gited” children did not display more behavioral problems than the “low gited.” Gited children with a signiicant verbal-performance discrepancy displayed more externalizing problems and mixed behavioral syndromes than gited children without such a discrepancy. hese results suggest that developmental asynchrony matters when examining emotional and behavioral problems in gited children. 1. Introduction Although the whole population of intellectually gited children—that is, children with an intellectual quotient (IQ) higher or equal to 130, according to the main and most consensual deinition [1]—seems not to display increased psychiatric morbidity [2], it is highly common that certain of them are referred to paediatric or child neuropsychiatry clinics for socioemotional problems and/or school under- achievement or maladjustment [3–6]. Behavioral and emo- tional problems typically described in intellectually gited children are anxiety [7], social withdrawal [8, 9], low self- esteem [10], and excessive perfectionism [7], which all belong to the category of “internalizing” problems [11]. his common observation of internalizing behavioral problems in gited children without an increased prevalence of internalizing categorical disorders (i.e., anxiety and mood disorders) in the whole gited population incites to study its psychopathology dimensionally [12] and also to consider its potential hetero- geneity [13]. Indeed, it is long considered that, among gited children, those with higher IQs display increased adjustment prob- lems [14]. Signiicant diiculties in social adjustment were common for children with the highest IQs in the famous Terman cohort [15], and Hollingworth reported diiculties increasing with IQ regarding socio-emotional and educa- tional adjustment [16, 17]. Hollingworth’s work suggested that the most desirable intellectual level for gited children was