The present research attempts to provide empirical data on creativity features that were employed by gifted students, as compared to ‘regular’ ones, in the process of constructing analogical problems. The research is coping with two major components of creativity: a) Readiness to get involved in the construction of new analogical problems and b) Creative features in the constructed problems. The results indicate that: 1) Gifted students were more creative than their age peers on the dimensions that were defined as relative creativity. 2) Relative creativity was especially salient in tasks that involved insight thinking. 3) Despite the high relative creativity of the gifted students' their comparative creativity, i.e. their creative capabilities as compared to the optimum, were limited. The results are coherent with the need and recommendations for progressive nurturing of gifted students towards fulfilling their creative potential

Children encounter problem solving in their formal schooling mainly in the verbal modality, whereas they are exposed to cartoons in their leisure time in a context perceived as nonlearning and nonthreatening. Yet, cartoons can be conceived of as problems in the visual-humorous modality, analogous to verbal problems. This article examines how gifted and average children solve analogous problems in these two modalities (verbal and visual-humorous), including their ability to consciously transfer solutions from one modality to the other. Specifically, four variables are considered: (1) the correctness of solutions of analogous problems in both modalities; (2) the students' perceived difficulty of these problems; (3) their awareness of the correctness of their solutions; and (4) their awareness of the contribution of a learned source problem in one modality to the solution of an analogous target problem in the other. Gifted children, as expected, did better on the verbal problems, but improved their skills in both modalities once exposed to the solution of analogous problems In the visual-humorous modality. Average children tended to solve cartoons better than verbal problems, but working with cartoons increased their verbal problem-solving skills. Results suggest that cartoon solving in the classroom can enhance the problem-solving capabilities of both populations.

ABSTRACT. The authors investigated the development of children's understanding of birthdays using structured interviews of 102 Israeli children aged 4 to 9 years. To fully comprehend the concept of birthday, children must grasp the relationship between the social occasion (the birthday party), irreversible biological growth, and the cyclical nature of the calendar. The authors' findings affirmed that a child's early conception is wholly social and self-contained (birthday parties confer a new age) and that young children believe that age can be affected by multiplying or skipping birthdays. The mature conception is socially based, but it is integrated with additional conceptual subsystems: the irreversible and independent unfolding of biological growth and the cyclical aspect of time. This enables the child to go beyond a magical approach to birthday rituals.

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