Analogical reasoning with novel concepts: Differential attention of intellectually gifted and nongifted children to relevant and irrelevant novel stimuli

Intellectually gifted and nongifted students in grades 6, 7, and 8 were given a modified verbal analogies test in which typical verbal analogy problems were preceded by novel or familiar statements about one of the analogy terms. The test required subjects to integrate this new information into an otherwise familiar problem-solving task. Both gifted and nongifted students gave significantly more attention to novel information than to familiar information. Gifted students gave significantly less attention to irrelevant novel information than did nongifted students, but did not differ from nongifted students in their attention to relevant novel information. Whereas intellectually gifted students gave significantly more time to relevant than to irrelevant novel information, non-gifted students allocated as much time to irrelevant novel information as they did to relevant novel information. Performance on this task was significantly correlated with teachers' ratings of intellectual ability for gifted, but not for nongifted students.