How do gifted students deal with opposites in problem solving?

 The area of research of this project concerns whether there is evidence that gifted individ-uals have a special ability to deal with contrasts and oppositeness in various different do-mains. Opposites are involved in many reasoning abilities such as problem solving (Branchi-ni et al., 2015; Gale & Ball, 2012) . Given that giftedness is the manifestation of performance that is clearly at the upper end of the distribution in terms of reasoning, planning, problem solving, abstract thinking, quick learn-ing, comprehending complex ideas (Subotnik, Olszewski- Kubilius, & Worrell, 2011) we were asked if there is evidence that gifted individual have also a special ability to deal with contrast and oppositeness. We present an initial implementation of the project, which aimed to study the impact on geo-metrical problem solving abilities of a specific training program based on manipulation of contra-ries and of the activities carried out in a summer-camp with a general focus on perception, de-scription and manipulation of relationships in various different tasks. 25 gifted and high achiever students (aged 12-17 years) were presented with 6 visuo-spatial problems typically used in geometrical problem solving tasks, three on the first day of camp and the other three on the last day. They were divided in two conditions; in one of these training based on contraries was presented. Differences were found between control and experimental group, also in relation to participants' individual profile. We will discuss how the results of our study relate to the cognitive profile of our participants which resulted from WISC-IV and Raven’s Standard/Advanced Progressive matrices. This project could represent a new research field that enriches the comprehension of gifted students' abilities in the context of international debate.