Evidence 1 Running Head: EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE Can Giftedness be Misdiagnosed as Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder? Empirical Evidence

To investigate whether giftedness might be misdiagnosed as ADHD, 71 gifted adolescents attending a summer residential camp were administered the Conners’ ADHD/DSM-IV Scales – Adolescent (Conners, 1997) and the Overexcitabilities Questionnaire – Two (OEQ-II, Falk et al., 1999). This sample yielded clinically significant scores at a rate more frequent than the national average of three to seven percent. Fifty-six percent of the adolescents in this sample scored in this range for the ADHD-Inattentive subscale, 52% for the ADHD-Hyperactive subscale, and 49% for the ADHD-Combined subscale. Additionally, the OEQII Psychomotor OE and the ADHD-Hyperactive subscales were significantly correlated at r=.516, p<.05 with item overlap across all ten items of the Psychomotor OE and 8 of the 9 ADHD-H subscale items. These data indicate that there is a possibility that misdiagnosis may occur in a gifted population.