This study compared the cognitive, social, and global self-perceptions of gifted children, over the course of a school year, in three settings that represented increasingly higher concentration levels of exceptional cognitive ability and for increasingly extensive parts of the day. Subjects were 176 students in grades 3-5 from the following three settings: traditional heterogeneously mixed classrooms, a continuous progress school district, and a magnet school for math and science. Results indicated that increasing concentrations of high ability students were associated with lower cognitive self-perceptions. There was some indication of higher social perceptions in the magnet school. Overall sense of worth showed no program effects, lending support to its characteristic of being more globally influenced than is self-perception of cognitive ability. (Includes 16 references.) (JDD)