Two Attentional Processes Subserving Working Memory Differentiate Gifted and Mainstream Students

Two working memory (WM) measures were contrasted, to clarify the nature of advantages in gifted children's cognitive processing. It was predicted that cognitively gifted children would excel in WM tasks taxing mental attention (i.e., n-back) but not tasks supported by perceptual attention (i.e....

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of cognition 2024-05, Vol.7 (1), p.47-47
Main Authors: Johnson, Janice, Howard, Steven J, Pascual-Leone, Juan
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
executive function
giftedness
mental attention
perceptual attention
theory of constructive operators
working memory
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Summary:Two working memory (WM) measures were contrasted, to clarify the nature of advantages in gifted children's cognitive processing. It was predicted that cognitively gifted children would excel in WM tasks taxing mental attention (i.e., n-back) but not tasks supported by perceptual attention (i.e., self-ordered pointing, SOPT). Ninety-one children aged 9-10 and 13-14 years, in a gifted or mainstream classroom, received n-back and SOPT, plus measures of mental-attentional ( -) capacity, inhibition, and shifting. Older children generally scored higher than younger children. As predicted, gifted children outperformed mainstream peers on all tasks, except for SOPT. Results demonstrate the need to distinguish between mental and perceptual attention in measurement of WM.
ISSN:2514-4820
2514-4820
DOI:10.5334/joc.370