This study aims to describe the motivation of gifted students through a self-determination theory (SDT) perspective. Quantitative with descriptive statistics method was used in this study. A total of 159 respondents were involved comprising of male and female gifted in accelerated class programme on senior high school in West Java province-Indonesia. Questionnaire was the instrument used with 55 items. The results obtained from this research are: (1) 19% of gifted student on intrinsic stage; 40% of gifted student on integration stage; 21% got to identification stage, 8% got to introjections stage, 12% got to external stage; (2) the highest aspect is that of competence achieved by students with the level of achievement being 63.55; and the aspect of autonomy with the level of achievement, 62.23%. The lowest aspect is the aspect of relatedness with the level of achievement at 60.86%. Overall, the level of achievement of intrinsic motivational aspects is 62.45%.

Keywords: Intrinsic motivation, gifted student, self-determination theory.