Strategy Acquisition and Maintenance of Gifted and Nongifted Young Children

Abstract

Young childrens strategy acquisition and maintenance were examined by comparing the recall, clustering, and study behaviors of children of different ages and intelligences. Three groups were included in the study: 5-year-old gifted children, 5-year-old nongifted children, and 7-year-old nongifted children. All were observed and measured on 5 consecutive days, with training on strategy use provided on the third day. Several differences among groups were found, generally favoring the gifted children in terms of performance and maintenance of strategies. In addition, the 5-year-old gifted children seemed to spontaneously use categorization strategies and clustered items in recall before training, while the 7-year-old children used categorization and clustering in recall after training. Implications for instruction for gifted students are discussed.

The role of intelligence and feedback in children’s strategy competence

“…Finally, two independent measures of adaptivity showed an increase in the adaptivity of children's strategy choices as a function of intelligence. The current study, which examined the contribution of intelligence to all four parameters of strategy competence at once in the context of a numerosity judgment task, confirms the results from earlier studies that addressed only one or some of these parameters in other domains such as simple arithmetic (Geary & Brown, 1991), memory, (Cho & Ahn, 2003;Scruggs & Mastropieri, 1988), and reasoning (Muir-Broaddus, 1995). Thus, the current study adds to the growing body of evidence suggesting that intelligence plays an important role in children's strategy selection and execution.…”

“…First, we expected that the number of children that would demonstrate a strategy repertoire consisting of the addition and subtraction strategies would be positively related to the intelligence level. This prediction was based on two sets of findings: (a) the observation that high-intelligence children not only possess a broader strategy repertoire but also use more sophisticated strategies compared with their peers of lower intelligence (e.g., Cho & Ahn, 2003;Jausovec, 1991;Montague, 1991;Scruggs & Mastropieri, 1988;Siegler & Kotovsky, 1986) and (b) the observation that high-intelligence children have an increased propensity for insight (Davidson & Sternberg, 1984;Sternberg & Davidson, 1995) that makes them more prone to apply the sophisticated subtraction strategy from the onset of the study. Second, given that high-intelligence children apply the more sophisticated strategies in their repertoire more frequently than children of lower intelligence (Geary & Brown, 1991;Muir-Broaddus, 1995), we predicted an intelligence-related increase in the percentage of trials on which the subtraction strategy would be used.…”

“…First, previous work has yielded only a fragmented picture of the role of intelligence in individuals' strategy competence because none of these earlier studies ever looked at all four parameters of strategy competence within a single task. Indeed, the majority of them looked only at strategy repertoire and frequency of strategy use (Bouffard-Bouchard, Parent, & Larivée, 1993;Cho & Ahn, 2003;Coyle, Read, Gaultney, & Bjorklund, 1998;Hettinger-Steiner, 2006;Scruggs & Mastropieri, 1988). A limited number of studies also considered a third parameter in addition to the repertoire and frequency parameters-either efficiency (e.g., Geary & Brown, 1991;Muir-Broaddus, 1995) or adaptivity (Gaultney, Bjorklund, & Goldstein, 1996)-but never all four of them.…”

Metacognition, Strategies, Achievement, and Demographics: Relationships Across Countries

“…These findings contrast a vast body of research that has supported the use of Learning Strategies for students within the United States (Cho & Ahn, 2003;Robbins et al, 2004;Tait & Entwhistle, 1996;Vrugt & Oort, 2008). Some prior research examining multi-national samples has also indicated similar findings that Learning Strategies may not be universally effective for students from all countries (Chiu et al, 2007;Ghiasvand, 2010).…”

Factors Influencing Competence: On Academic Motivation and Learning Strategies of Gifted and Non-gifted Students

“…또한 성취수준이 뛰어난 영재학생들의 경우 다양한 학습 전략을 활용하는 것으로 보고된 바 있어 (김유미, 류성림, 2010;Zimmerman & Martinez-Pons, 1990) (양수민, 이귀숙, 2012;DeCharms, 1984;Leondari & Gialamas, 2002;Schunk, 1983;Shen & Pedulla, 2000;Vallerand et al, 1994;Zimmerman, Bandura, & Martinez-Pons, 1992 (구영수, 양연숙, 2013;문병상, 2000;조현철, 유수창, 2011;Cho & Ahn, 2003;Vandestoep, Pintrich, & Fagerlin, 1996;Yunus, Sulaiman, & Embi, 2013;Zimmerman & Martinez-Pons, 1990)을 뒷받침해 준다.…”