Specific and diversive curiosity in gifted elementary students.

Twenty-nine gifted students in Grades 2 to 6 from the small school districts in north central Kansas completed the Maze test and the Which-to-Discuss test. Background information such as age, sex, grade, and marital status of parents was also collected. There were no significant differences between boys and girls or for students from divorced and nondivorced parents on either the Which-to-Discuss test (specific curiosity) or the Maze test scores (diversive curiosity). The students scored significantly higher on the former test than chance guessing which suggests the students were displaying specific curiosity. Scores of these gifted students on these two tests of curiosity were significantly and positively correlated.     

States of curiosity and interest enhance memory differently in adolescents and in children

Curiosity – broadly defined as the desire to acquire new information – enhances learning and memory in adults. In addition, interest in the information (i.e., when the information is processed) can also facilitate later memory. To date, it is not known how states of pre‐information curiosity and post‐information interest enhance memory in childhood and adolescence. We used a trivia paradigm in which children and adolescents (N = 60, 10–14 years) encoded trivia questions and answers associated with high or low curiosity. States of high pre‐answer curiosity enhanced later memory for trivia answers in both children and adolescents. However, higher positive post‐answer interest enhanced memory for trivia answers beyond the effects of curiosity more strongly in adolescents than in children. These results suggest that curiosity and interest have positive effects on learning and memory in childhood and adolescence, but might need to be harnessed in differential ways across child development to optimize learning.     

Psychoanalysis and change: Between curiosity and faith1

The IPA recently announced that it now recognized three sessions per week as a valid frequency for psychoanalytic treatment. From the debate that has ensued over the problems this decision is expected to cause, important insights can be gained into the current crisis of identity affl icting psychoanalysis. Technical aspects of therapy that were once considered peripheral have gradually acquired the status of core theoretical parameters. Freud was a man of science who was concerned with universal human phenomena. His disagreements with followers such as Jung and Adler centred on the major theoretical issues of the sexual nature of the libido and the existence of the unconscious. It is also interesting to note that Freud never distinguished between psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic psychotherapy. Where he did make a distinction, it was between psychoanalysis and the consciousness‐based psychotherapies, or those that used suggestion as a major tool. When the point has been reached where the frequency of sessions or the use of a couch is used to defi ne whether a treatment is psychoanalytic, some consideration of whether the right direction is being pursued is called for. A serious risk is being run of sacrifi cing our spirit of curiosity for the sake of tradition, becoming more concerned with repeating the formal aspects of practice than with the real purpose of psychoanalysis, the investigation of the most profound workings of human nature.     

Memory abilities in generally gifted and excelling-in-mathematics adolescents

This paper presents part of a multidimensional examination of mathematical giftedness. The present study examined the memory mechanisms associated with general giftedness (G) and excellence in mathematics (E) in four groups of 10th–12th grade students (16–18 years old) varying in levels of G and E. The participants first underwent the Raven test for general ability evaluation and SAT-M — the mathematical excellence tests in order to design the study groups. Afterwards, the students were tested on a battery of three memory tests including tests for short-term (STM) and working memory (WM). The results reveal that the G factor is related to high STM for both phonological loop and phonological central executive mechanisms. It was also found that the E factor is associated with high visual–spatial memory (VSM), in particular with the visual central executive mechanism. An interaction effect was found between G and E factors regarding WM. The central executive mechanism appeared to be related to both G and E factors. In addition, gender differences were shown within the groups. Male participants performed better than their female counterparts on a phonological storage task and a phonological central executive mechanism task. The results can contribute to the theoretical knowledge regarding similarities and differences in memory mechanisms in G and E groups.     

Three wishes of gifted and nongifted adolescents

Three wishes of 69 gifted and 66 nongifted adolescents within the United States were solicited in a group situation. The findings indicated that personal wishes were of the most concern for both gifted and nongifted adolescents, and that male adolescents in both groups tended to value material possessions more often than did female adolescents. A significant between-groups difference revealed that gifted adolescents expressed more altruistic and fewer goal wishes than their nongifted peers. These kinds of data are one more means of describing, for teachers and counselors, a general picture of students' psychological and social orientations.     

The nature of curiosity in children

This study examined several behaviors claimed to reflect curiosity in order to determine whether there are one or more types of curiosity. A secondary purpose was to examine the relations between the one or more types of curiosity and sex, social class, intelligence, achievement level, and ratings of personality traits. In two individual sessions 84 American first-grade boys and girls were administered five tasks which measured observation of complex and simple stimuli, preference of complex and simple stimuli, preference for the unknown, structure of meaning, and object exploration. A normalized Varimax factor analysis allowed the extraction of five factors: manipulatory curiosity, perceptual curiosity, conceptual curiosity, curiosity about the complex, and adjustive-reactive curiosity. Only the first factor was related to a demographic variable, sex. The nature of the factors and their theoretical and practical significance are discussed.     

Biofeedback and gifted children: an initial investigation

37 intellectually gifted students were given a 15-min. training session in EMG frontalis biofeedback to determine its effectiveness for reduction of stress. While differences across sex in biofeedback training were not found, these highly able students significantly reduced their levels of tension.     

Stability and change in types of behavioral disturbance of children and adolescents

Changes with aging and stability of dimensions of behavioral disturbance were determined for 732 children and adolescents who constituted the sample reassessed after 5 years of an original cross-sectional sample of Manhattan youth 6 to 18 years old. On three of the six types of disturbance strongly related to the total impairment judgments of psychiatrists, specifically those tapping domains of aggression, greater or constant levels of pathology were noted over time. Cross-sectional versus longitudinal analyses on the same types of disturbance had discrepant results half the time. Stability coefficients for five of the six types of disturbance were greater than .55. Stability curves by age cohorts investigated whether a type of disturbance appeared transitory at certain age periods but more crystallized at other ages. Its prognostic significance would vary accordingly. Implications for intervention-treatment and for studies comparing the predictive value of different classes of behavior, e.g., neurotic versus antisocial, are discussed.This investigation was supported by U. S. Public Health Service Project Grants MH-11545 and MH-18260 of the National Institute of Mental Health, Center for Epidemiological Studies. Support for the principal investigator was given by Career Scientist Grants I-338 and I-640 of the Health Research Council of the City of New York. The principal investigator is currently supported through Research Scientist Award K5-MH-20868 of the National Institute of Mental Health.This research was presented in part at the Eastern Psychological Association Meetings, April 3–5, 1975, New York City.     

Relative and absolute stability in perceived parenting behaviour: a longitudinal study with children and adolescents

Patterns of relative and absolute stability in parental behaviour with children and adolescents are reported. The sample comprised 523 youth (58.7% girls). Data were collected at three time periods: T1 (M age = 11.1 yr.), T2 (M age = 12.2 yr.), and T3 (M age = 13.2 yr.), each separated by one year. According to children's reports, relative consistency was moderate in both mothers and fathers, particularly as regards communication and strict control. In contrast, as children got older, parental rearing practices related to strict control and hostility decreased. There was a similarity between fathers and mothers in terms of relative and absolute stability. Relative stability was affected by the child's sex, the parenting variable, and the time period; however, the patterns of absolute stability reveal no differences by sex.     

Depression and self-esteem in academically gifted and nongifted children: A comparison study

The present investigation examined depression and self-esteem in a sample of 145 gifted and nongifted fourth and fifth grade children. Self-esteem was assessed by the Coopersmith Self-Esteem Inventory. Depression was measured by Kovacs' Children's Depression Inventory, the Reynolds' Child Depression Scale, and teachers' global ratings of depression. As a group, gifted children did not differ on levels of self-esteem or depression from their nongifted peers. However, when grade and gender differences were examined, it was found that gifted boys tended to report lower levels of self-esteem and more depression than gifted girls. Teachers also judged boys to be more depressed than girls. Furthermore, fifth-graders were rated by teachers to be more depressed than fourth-graders. Overall, this investigation did not find major differences in affective characteristics between gifted and nongifted children.     

Differences in mathematical reasoning between typically achieving and gifted children

Mathematical giftedness refers to mastery in a specific mathematical domain at an earlier than expected age. The present study examined which cognitive processes accounted for differences in mathematical reasoning between gifted children (MRG) and their typically achieving peers (TA). Naming speed, phonological awareness, short-term memory, executive functioning, and working memory were examined in 51 children aged approximately 7 years. A series of stepwise regression models, using a contrast variable to capture differences in mathematical reasoning between MRG and TA children, were created to examine which cognitive domains accounted for differences in mathematical reasoning. Short-term memory (r²?=?.08) and visual-spatial working memory (r²?=?.39) emerged as the only cognitive predictors within a model that included gender, age, and fluid intelligence. This model captured all of the variance distinguishing mathematics reasoning between MRG and TA children, explaining an overall contribution of 70% of the variance in mathematical reasoning.     

Contingency awareness,partial reinforcement effects,and curiosity motivation in children

Third- and fourth-grade children were given a two-choice discrimination learning task, designed to associate each of three syllables with a different reward schedule: 100% reward, 50% reward, and 0% reward. Subsequent to the conditioning phase, measures were made of the subject's awareness of the reward contingencies associated with the syllables, as well as the pleasantness and curiosity which these syllables had acquired during the conditioning. The results showed that a partially rewarded cue was evaluated as somewhat less “pleasant” than a continuously rewarded cue, but evoked more “curiosity” than either the continuous or nonrewarded cues. These effects emerged only for the contingency aware groups.     

The comparative judgements of generally and specifically gifted children

Different groups of children were compared on sentence verification tasks. The children were either academically, musically or artistically gifted, and there were two forms of the task. In one, a picture was followed by a sentence, and in another, one sentence was followed by another. Subjects had to decide as quickly as possible whether or not the second proposition logically confirmed the first. In the picture-sentence condition results from all groups could be fitted to the constituent comparison model for sentence verification proposed by Carpenter and Just (1975). For the sentence-sentence condition, however, the observed results diverged from those predicted by the model. The results are explained in terms of different degrees of linguistic processing capacities of the subjects, and they demonstrate the importance which verbal-logical congruence has for children. Artistically able children had difficulties in processing subject/object incongruence in sentence pairs whereas musically able children had more problems in processing above/below incongruence.     

The latent structure of trait curiosity: evidence for interest and deprivation curiosity dimensions

To evaluate Litman and Jimerson's (2004) Interest/Deprivation (I/D) model of curiosity, 355 students (269 women, 86 men) responded to 6 trait curiosity measures including the Curiosity/Interest in the World scale (C/IW; Peterson & Seligman, 2004), the Curiosity and Exploration Inventory (CEI; Kashdan, Rose, & Fincham, 2004), the Perceptual Curiosity scale (PC; Collins, Litman, & Spielberger, 2004), the Epistemic Curiosity scale (EC; Litman & Spielberger, 2003), and the Curiosity as a Feeling-of-Deprivation scales (CFD; Litman & Jimerson, 2004). Consistent with expectations, the results of confirmatory factor analyses demonstrated that the C/IW, CEI, PC, EC scales defined an Interest (I) curiosity factor, whereas the CFD scales formed a Deprivation (D) curiosity factor. However, as compared to the other interest-based curiosity measures, one of the EC subscales was found to be less differentiated from the CFD scales, presumably because these instruments assess overlapping aspects of Berlyne's (1954) concept of epistemic curiosity. The results of this study indicated that I and D curiosity are related but differentiated curiosity dimensions, providing evidence for the validity of the I/D model.     

Metamemory, memory performance, and causal attributions in gifted and average children

Fifth and seventh graders who had been teacher-selected as high- or average-achieving were tested on the Kognitiver F?higkeits Test, a standardized test of intellectual abilities for German children. Children who met preestablished criteria as gifted or average were then tested on measures of metacognitive knowledge, attributional beliefs, and performance on a sort recall task. Results indicated ability-related differences in metamemory and sort recall performances. Responses to the attributional questionnaires also varied systematically according to ability: gifted children were more likely to attribute their academic successes to high ability than were average children, who showed a stronger belief in the importance of effort in determining task outcomes. Causal modeling analyses illustrated the strength of metacognitive knowledge as a performance predictor on the memory task, especially for average children. Results are discussed in terms of the value of metacognitive theory in understanding individual performance differences.