| Summary: | This study was an investigation of the roles of IQ, cognitive level, and related information processing variables as predictors of problem finding ability in intellectually gifted children. It was hypothesized that cognitive level would contribute the most to the prediction of problem finding, followed in importance firstly by the information processing variable of insight and secondly by IQ. It was further hypothesized that cognitive level would mediate the prediction of problem finding by insight.
The sample consisted of 76 children in grades five, six, and seven. Subjects of varying ability were included in the sample in order to clarify the hypothesized predictive relationships. The children were administered a problem finding task, a set of insight puzzles, a test of formal reasoning, and a group IQ test.
Using the linear multiple regression model, the criterion variable, problem finding, was regressed on the predictor variables cognitive level, insight, and IQ. Backward and stepwise selection procedures were used. A replacement-deletion procedure was used to test the mediation of insight by formal operations. Additional correlational analyses supplemented the primary regression analysis.
The results revealed that cognitive level and insight were not significant predictors of problem finding. This was thought to be due to a "floor effect" stemming from the low cognitive maturity of the sample. IQ as a predictor of problem finding was in the expected direction, although the amount of variance accounted for was minimal.
Formal reasoning was found to mediate the prediction of problem finding by insight. Significant correlations between certain of the formal reasoning schemata and two of the insight processes appeared to support this mediating effect.
It was concluded that even bright children are constrained by maturation in their ability to find problems and solve insight puzzles. There are implications inherent in these constraints for age-appropriate definitions of giftedness. Age-appropriate curriculum for the gifted was another implication stemming from the findings of the study. === Education, Faculty of === Graduate
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