Attributional choices for academic success and failure by intellectually gifted students

This study emerges from the lack of empirical research on the gifted students' attributions about acedemic success and failure in multiple subject areas and school in general. We explore differences in top attributional choices between boys and girls for success and failure in general acedemic, language arts, science, and mathematics. Gifted students were more likely to attribute failure to not working hard enough (long-term effort), rather than to not being smart (ability). Sex differences were found in attributional choices for genmeral academics, science, mathematics, and language arts. The findings counter some popular theoretica expectations of gifted students' attributional choicescfor success and failure in their acdemic performance.