Giftedness and variability in strategic processing on a multitrial memory task: Evidence for stability in gifted cognition

This study examined strategic variability and variability-performance relations in intellectually gifted (mean Ia = 142.31; n = 85) and non-gifted (mean IQ = 112.44; n = 81) children who received five trials on an organizational memory task. Children were presented with different sets of categorizable words (e.g., boat, bus, car, banana, apple, orange) on each trial and were asked to remember the words for later recall. Four strategies were coded on each trial: sorting at study, rehearsal, category naming, and clustering at recall. Strategic variability was assessed in terms of fluctuations in the use of single strategies over trials, use of different combinations of multiple strategies over trials; and trial-by-trial switches in strategy use. In general, gifted children showed lower levels of variability (or higher levels of stability) in strategy use and higher levels of recall than non-gifted children In addition, stability in strategy use was consistently associated with relatively high levels of recall for gifted but not non-gifted children. These findings confirm and extend research on non-strategic elementary cognitive tasks showing that cognitive stability is a prominent characteristic of gifted cognition.