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The purpose of this study was to investigate the differences between intellectually gifted achieving and underachieving secondary school students on certain motivational goal orientations such as effort, task, competition, power, praise, feedback, token, social concern, and social dependency. A total of 144 selected United Arab Emirates secondary school male students (15-19 years of age) participated in the investigation. Participants were classified into the following two intellectually gifted groups: achieving students (n= 98) and underachieving students (n= 46). The Inventory of School Motivation was used as a measure of the motivational goal orientations. Multivariate analysis of variance results indicated significant differences between the two intellectually gifted groups on Effort, Task, Competition, Feedback, and Social Dependency scales. Further discriminant analysis revealed that Effort, Task, and Competition were the most discriminating variables that separate the intellectually gifted achieving students from their underachieving peers.

To examine the relationships between the inferred hemispheric thinking style, gender, and academic major, 190 undergraduate men and women in social science and applied science classes were administered the Your Style of Learning and Thinking to assess their thinking styles. Although endorsements of an integrated style were highest for all subjects, analysis indicated men tended to endorse the right-hemisphere style items in processing information more than women, while the latter tended to endorse items of an integrated style in processing information. Applied science majors appeared to endorse items of a more right-hemisphere style in processing information than social science majors. These results were discussed in view of contemporary biological, psychosocial, and educational perspectives.

To examine the relationship between an inferred hemispheric style and problem-solving performance, 78 undergraduate students were classified as having preference of Left-, Integrated-, or Right-hemispheric style by scores on Your Style of Learning and Thinking. The Tower of Hanoi was used as a measure of problem solving. Number of moves, total time, and number of illegal moves to solve the Tower of Hanoi task were the dependent measures of problem-solving performance. Analysis of variance showed significant differences among the three inferred hemispheric-style groups on two of the three measures of problem solving. Further comparison indicated that students who scored as showing Left-hemispheric style reported more moves and a longer mean time to solve the task than did students scoring as Right-hemispheric style. No differences were observed among the three groups on the number of illegal moves.