Ellen Winner is a psychologist and a professor at Boston College. She specializes in psychology of art. In this interview, she answers the following questions including: (1) What are you currently working on, researching? (2) Could you elaborate on the intrinsic value of art education? (3) How might you compare your work today to earlier advocates…

Our aspirations for gifted learners in talent development programs need to go beyond the development of expertise, creative productivity, and eminence. It is argued that wisdom development should be the ultimate goal of educating gifted learners. It is not merely what talents gifted learners develop, but how they use these talents, which will…

The conceptualization of giftedness continues to be a widely debated topic within the field. Recently, there has been a shift from a psychometric view of giftedness to inclusion of conative and contextual factors. How one defines and conceptualizes "gifted" drives assessment and identification practices. Conceptualization also guides the…

We investigated whether typically-developing children with a gift for drawing realistically show the local processing bias seen in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Twenty-seven 6-12 year-olds made an observational drawing (scored for level of realism) and completed three local processing tasks, and parents completed the Childhood…

Analyzes critical research and promotional literature on J. Guilford's Structure-of-Intellect (SOI) model as it relates to the cognitive functioning of gifted students, and evaluates implications for identification and programing of gifted students. It is concluded that the promotional literature promises more than it has delivered and that major…

The article reviews six conceptions of genius and offers a seventh. Three types of genius (analytic, synthetic, and integrated) are defined. Common to all three is the sustained ability to use analysis and synthesis (i.e., to be both linear and creative in approaching complex problems). (Author/DB)

This paper presents a review of the major ideas on the nature of intelligence and giftedness. Especially noted are theories of Howard Gardner, Robert Sternberg, and J.P. Das. Gardner expanded traditional notions of intelligence to include such talents as spatial ability, musical intelligence, bodily-kinesthetic intelligence, and interpersonal and…

Assessment of conceptual level of 130 secondary students identified as gifted and 131 students from schools without gifted programs revealed significantly higher scores for gifted students. Findings suggested that such a measure of cognitive complexity may enhance identification of gifted students. (CL)

This discussion sees child prodigy as a distinct form of giftedness characterized by a more focused, specialized, and domain-specific form of giftedness than seen in other gifted children. The child prodigy phenomenon demonstrates the complex relationships between psychometric intelligence in the traditional sense and expression of talent within…

Ninety university undergraduate students were tested on a number of tasks assessing their recognition of possible and impossible figures, mental rotation, ideational fluency, and self-report artistic and creative characteristics. Scores on the Impossible Figures Task (IFT-14) and the Mental Rotation Test, and self-ratings on the Artistic…

The third of three reports on Project SEARCH (Search for Exceptional Abilities Reachable among Children with Handicaps) contains 28 lesson plans designed to develop the creative/productive thinking processes in handicapped children. It is explained that the activities are the products of cooperation between professional artists and special…

Describes a program designed by a practicing inventor to systematically teach gifted and talented elementary school students how to be inventive. Examples of typical student inventions and an appendix listing steps or keys in inventing are included. (Author/RH)

Describes types of metacognitive knowledge and how this knowledge relates to other cognitive skills. The strengths and weaknesses of three instructional strategies for promoting metacognition among gifted and talented students are reviewed, and the skills and strategies that should be included in metacognitive instruction programs are discussed.…

The author presents a portrait of one gifted child, six-year-old Michael, and discusses procedures and tests for identifying pupils for an academically gifted program. (SJL)