IMPULSIVITY AND EMOTION REGULATION IN GIFTED ADULTS WITH ADDICTIVE BEHAVIORS

Abstract

"Empirical evidence pointed out giftedness, as defined by high intellectual abilities (IQ ? 130 according to the WHO), to be a protective or a neutral factor in the development of psychopathologies in children and adolescents (e.g., Martin et al., 2010, Alexopoulou, 2020). Nevertheless, very few studies demonstrated interest regarding addictions and giftedness. The few ones that have attempted to explore this subject focused only on academic giftedness and their relation to substance use. For instance, Williams and Hagger-Johnson (2017) found an increased risk of drinking alcohol regularly and cannabis use during adolescence and early adulthood in academic gifted students at age 11, whereas Peairs et al. (2010) studied the probability to try alcohol in students and found no difference between academic gifted students and their non-gifted peers. Overall, there is a huge lack of data regarding addictions and factors strongly associated with addictive behaviors, like impulsivity (Berg et al., 2015) or emotion regulation (Estevez et al., 2017), in gifted people, and more especially in gifted adults. The purpose of this research is to better understand gifted adults with addictive behaviors by studying impulsivity and emotion regulation in this specific population. The sample consists of adults (? 18 years) divided into 4 groups according to their condition: giftedness or not, with or without addiction. The 4 groups will be compared based on scientifically validated tools in impulsivity (UPPS) and emotion regulation (DERS). The IQ scores is evaluated with a full Wechsler Intelligence Scale. An interview is made systematically to check the addiction criteria of the DSM-V. We voluntary chose to consider every kind of addictions to stay in line with an exploratory goal. The preliminary results (n = 150) will be exposed in this poster. We expect that the gifted adults with addictive behaviors would show better scores in emotion regulation abilities overall than the non-gifted ones, but lower scores regarding the sphere of emotional identification and awareness. This would be consistent with the results of Brasseur (2013) that suggested less emotional intelligence in gifted adolescents regarding identification and understanding of their own emotions. We also believe that they would show lower scores in impulsivity compared to the non-gifted ones because of a positive correlation between emotion regulation overall and low impulsivity."