Abstracts

Twice-Exceptional Students:  Linking Psychology and Neuroscience 

Susan Assouline

University of Iowa, Iowa

Twice-exceptional students have significant cognitive strengths and a diagnosed neurodevelopmental disorder, such as autism. Psychologists have the expertise to measure the cognitive strengths of twice-exceptional individuals and understand the implications of these strengths. Psychologists also are familiar with the impact of the deficits associated with autism.  However, the neurobiology underlying the strengths and deficits of the twice-exceptional population have been understudied by neuroscientists.  In a newly-funded project that involves a collaboration between the University of Iowa Neuroscience Institute and the Belin-Blank Center for Gifted Education and Talent Development, the domains of psychology/education and neuroscience join together to explore the neurobiological and psychoeducational factors that predict the outcomes for individuals with exceptional cognitive ability who are also autistic.  In this presentation, we review the progress of the collaborative efforts to date and present the newest project, which involves the assessment of several hundred high school students using both psychoeducational cognitive assessments and the NIH (National Institutes of Health) toolkit of assessments.  The aim is to create a comprehensive dataset  so that cognitive scores from psychology/education can be linked to those used in neuroscience.

(With Megan Foley-Nicpon)

Predictive Relationship among Catalysts for Developing STEM Talent of Specialized Residential Science High School Students 

Seokhee Cho  

St. John's University, New York

Catalysts for developing STEM talent of specialized residential science high school (SRSHS) students their predictive relationships have been investigated. Study I examined how instructional approaches at the SRSHS predict 559 students’ creative productivity during their high school period in relation with their affective characteristics, school engagement, and STEM GPA. It was found that relation between instructional approach and creative productivity is significantly mediated by affective characteristics, school engagement, and STEM GPA. Study II compared 88 high and 16 low achieving STEM talented student at the SRSHS in terms of catalysts from elementary to high school periods. It was found interest in math and science during their elementary school period was the only variable which showed significant difference. No significant difference was found between high and low achievers in family processes, belief in intelligence, and learning strategies use. Study III examined qualitative data of 5 economically disadvantaged students’ lives at SRSHS. Their math talent was recognized early, but they were not provided with rich learning opportunities before SRSHS. They struggled with extremely accelerated math curriculum at SRSHS. Some lost interest in mathematics and changed their focus to science research. Experiences of research with mentors were the most meaningful for their plan for future career. These three studies inform us that STEM talent can be developed into creative productivity better with early interest in STEM, early recognition of math talent, early rich learning opportunities, research-oriented instructional approaches, robust affective characteristics, active school engagement, and high STEM GPA at the high school period. 

Cultivating Hope for Academic Talent Development

Dante D. Dixson

Michigan State University, Michigan

Previous research indicates that hope is related to the talent development of academically gifted students. However, not much is known about how to cultivate hopefulness in academically gifted students. In this study, I examine how various school-based factors relate to the cultivation of hopefulness in a sample of academically gifted adolescents.

(Eye) Tracking creative problem-solving processes in mathematics linked to different levels of creatiivty

Roza Leikin

University of Haifa, Israel

To examin creative probllem-solving processing we employed behavioral and neuro-physiological methodologies: Problem-solving strategies used by the participants were analyzed for fluency, flexibility, originality and the effectiveness of the problem-solving process. The corresponding eye-tracking patterns were examined using heatmaps, scan-paths and entropy. We explored how creative process and the eye-tracking patterns are related to levels of students’ creativity. Four university students with strong mathematical background were chosen based on the differences in the levels of their creative performance on MSTs. The eye tracking analyses reveal that seemingly identical problem-solving strategies can be linked to different cognitive processes and that mathematical insight is reflected in identifiable eye-tracking patterns related to the more focused regions of interest. 

(with Adi Eraki and Bat-Sheva Hadad)

Regifting the gifted: A 21st century skill vision

Todd Lubart

Université Paris Cité, France

This presentation will look at the current concept of giftedness as it developed to include high intellectual potrential and high creative potential.  The concept of high creative potential and its measurement will be developed in detail. Then the extension of giftedness to other 21st century skills will be proposed.

Mentoring Talent Development in STEMM

Laura Lunsford 

Campbell University, North Carolina

In this presentation I seek feedback on a co-authored book proposal focused on mentoring talent development in STEMM. Mentoring in STEMM rarely adopts a talent development lens and an important contribution will be to integrate these three literatures. To ensure the book has an international perspective, we wish to have one section devoted to interviews with senior scientists from their country's equivalent of a national academies of science.  Input is desired on the proposal structure generally and specifically on how to develop questions that lead to interesting data on this topic from eminent scientists, rather than naive thinking on mentoring. 

Note, one of the co-authors will also be at the summit - Dr. Stoeger. 

Performance feedback as an intervention to improve self-estimates of cognitive abilities

Aljoscha Neubauer

Institute of Psychology, Karl-Franzens-University of Graz, Austria

Several meta-analyses showed that individuals’ self-estimates of cognitive abilities are rather inaccurate. Other research indicates that this is due to overestimation, specifically the Dunning-Kruger effect (1999). These authors suggested performance feedback as a means to overcome this misestimation. In two experimental studies (each N = 200) we tested whether performance feedback might improve the accuracy of self-estimates for different kinds of cognitive tasks (verbal, numerical, spatial, working memory). While for some of the tested abilities performance feedback improved the accuracy of self-estimates (in comparison to a control group), for other abilities no such interaction was found.

Growth of High-Achieving Students: Questions and Hypotheses

Karen Rambo-Hernandez 

Texas A&M University , Texas

High-achieving students grow academically at different rates than their peers. Some, but not all, of the observed patterns align with Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development. I intend to highlight the inconsistencies, explore results considering other theoretical frameworks, and hypothesize how school-related contextual factors may influence their academic growth.

A Framework for Studying the Psychosocial Skills Associated with Academic Talent Development

Anne N. Rinn

University of North Texas, Texas

Psychosocial skills cannot be studied as standalone psychological constructs within the field of gifted education but must instead be situated within a framework integrated into the field itself. Rinn will present her framework that builds upon the work of Paula Olszewski-Kubilius, Rena Subotnik, and Frank Worrell; David Dai; intersectionality theory; the fields of developmental and educational psychology; and a systems approach. Psychosocial skills associated with academic talent development will be used to explore the framework.

Can Temporarily Opening Equity Gaps Lead to Their Closure in the Long Run? A Discussion of Scale Effects in Excellence Gaps

Heidrun Stoeger 

University of Regensburg, Germany

In this presentation I seek feedback on a co-authored book proposal focused on mentoring talent development in STEMM. Mentoring in STEMM rarely adopts a talent development lens and an important contribution will be to integrate these three literatures. To ensure the book has an international perspective, we wish to have one section devoted to interviews with senior scientists from their country's equivalent of a national academies of science.  Input is desired on the proposal structure generally and specifically on how to develop questions that lead to interesting data on this topic from eminent scientists, rather than naive thinking on mentoring. 

Note, one of the co-authors will also be at the summit - Dr. Stoeger. 

(With Albert Ziegler)

Passing Along Insider Knowledge in STEM 

Rena Subotnik 

American Psychological Association, Washington DC

In this session, we will define insider knowledge and how it might be conceptualized within a talent development framework and in contrast to other related terms such as tacit knowledge and shadow curriculum.  We will present some examples of insider knowledge from STEM professionals from an on-going set of interviews conducted in the last months. This implicit information could be made explicit to the benefit of vast number of young people with interests in STEM, particularly those students who have limited opportunities to obtain such information within their families, communities, or schools..  We will ask the group to advise us in (1) ways to organize the information for delivery to secondary school students, and (2) what the method of delivery should be (form and person -visiting scientist, teacher etc.).  

(With Paula Olszewski-Kubilius and Frank Worrell)

High-ability students’ academic and psychosocial development: getting a grasp on general and specific developmental processes

Karine Verschuren

School Psychology and Development in Context,KU Leuven, Belgium

Many studies have already shed light on high-ability students’ academic and psychosocial functioning. Within he TALENT project we have taken a contextual approach to studying cognitively gifted students’ academic and psychosocial development. Specifically, we examined the role of interactions with significant others in the home (i.e., parents) and school context (i.e., teachers and peers). Also, we took a comparative approach: by including both cognitively gifted and non-gifted children in the analyses, we aimed to distinguish between general factors that facilitate or hamper development across ability levels and factors that are specifically relevant for cognitively gifted students. In this presentation I will give an overview of some of the main findings of this project and the questions that are raised. Particularly, I will focus on the issue of generalizability versus specificity of developmental processes among high-ability students and the implications for the field of giftedness research.

Mental Health Problems: What’s Intelligence Got to Do with it?

Moshe Zeidner

University of Haifa, Israel

Over the years, behavioral scientists have explored various avenues linking human intelligence to both personality factors and human adjustment. Researchers have attempted to unravel the theoretical and practical interface between human adjustment and mental health, on one hand, and intelligence, on the other, hoping to shed light on how these two key constructs impact upon one another (and other variables) in the course of human development and day to day functioning. In this talk, I examine the nexus of conceptual and empirical relationships between intelligence and mental health issues, focusing on depression as an illustrative case of the complex mutual relationship between intelligence and mental health problems.  

Growth Mindsets Revisited

Albert Ziegler

Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany

The concept of growth mindsets has received much attention, including in the field of talent development. However, recent meta-analyses have led to disillusionment, as neither the explanatory potential nor the intervention potential appear to be particularly high. We would therefore like to propose new conceptual approach to growth mindsets that recognizes the functionality of stability beliefs in addition to the functionality of growth beliefs.

(With Heidrun Stoeger)