THE EMERGENCE OF STRATEGIC BEHAVIOR IN THE GIFTED

The effects of varying degrees of strategy training on process and performance measures of gifted and regular children were analyzed in relation to perceptual efficiency and metamemory. Gifted and regular children in the experimental group were given extensive strategy training on a paired-associate task and minimal strategy training on a sort-recall readiness task. A control group of gifted and regular children received no strategy training on these tasks. Following the training sessions, maintenance, near generalization, and far generalization tasks were administered to all children. All children were also given an alphabet-search task on four occasions without strategy training, in addition to pre- and posttest measures of metamemory and perceptual efficiency. When the task was well trained, gifted and regular children did not differ on strategy maintenance or recall. Recall differed, however, on near and far generalization measures for the well trained task. When the task was minimally trained, gifted children were able to retain and apply the experimenter generated strategy more effectively than regular children as evidenced by superior strategy and recall scores on the maintenance task, and superior far generalization strategy scores. The gifted and regular experimental children did not differ on strategy use prior to strategy training on this task, but the gifted children's recall scores were significantly higher on two of three pretraining sessions. While gifted and regular children did not differ on strategy use on the untrained task, gifted children recalled significantly more pictures than regular children on three of the four sessions. Results were interpreted with respect to the superior metamemorial performance of gifted children. Metamemory correlated significantly with all maintenance and generalization measures, except triad elaboration, as well as the emergence of strategic behavior on the untrained task. These correlations remained significant when verbal IQ and perceptual efficiency were partialed out. The implications of these findings for intelligence and metacognitive theories were discussed.