Giftedness and Flexibility on a Mathematical Set-Breaking Task

Abstract

Accuracy, speed, flexibility, and metacognitive knowledge were studied in 19 school-identified gifted and 11 average ability 11-year-old students. The most intet-esting result was a significant three-way interaction among giftedness, speed, and flexibility, with metacognitive knowledge as the criterion. Regardless of speed, rigid (inflexible) gifted children had less metacognitive knowledge than flexible gifted children. Flexible gifted children who solved the problems quickly had more metacognitive knowledge than those who solved them slowly. Among average children, rigid subjects had less metacognitive knowledge, regardless of speed, and flexible average children showed more metacognitive knowledge when they were slower on the problems.