**Abstract**

The study was designed to enable researchers the opportunities to investigate the number sense performance and methods used by both the gifted and general students. A mixed-method design was used, and 48 gifted students and 95 general students in fourth grade from two elementary schools in Southern Taiwan were selected. The sample was chosen using a convenience sampling method. Nine students in each group were randomly selected and interviewed. The results showed that the gifted students performed significantly higher than the general students on the whole test and in each component of number sense. The contributions of this study based on the findings are discussed.

**Keywords:** fourth graders, general student, gifted student, number sense, elementary school
