Marcia S. Scott

The Identification of Giftedness: A Comparison of White, Hispanic and Black Families

A survey was sent to White, Hispanic and Black parents of children in the gifted and talented program of a large urban school district. The results indicated that there were few differences among the three parent groups in either the characteristics that had indicated to them that their child might be gifted, or in the attributes which they believed were current descriptors of their gifted child. Large group differences were present, however, between the White sample and the two minority group samples in the percentage of families who requested an evaluation of their child for possible placement in the gifted and talented program. Fewer of the minority parents made such a request. This factor could contribute to the underrepresentation of minority students in gifted programs.

Identifying Cognitively Gifted Ethnic Minority Children

Four hundred kindergarten children in regular education and 31 kindergarten children identified as gifted were presented a cognitive battery consisting of nine different tasks. Five measures representing the three open-ended tasks were associated with both a significant group difference and the presence of high performing outliers from the regular education sample. When frequency distributions for the two groups were computed based on a total score summed over the five measures, seven of the eight regular education students with the highest score, the upper 2%, were either Black/NonHispanic or White/Hispanic. The upper 2% of the regular education sample performed at a level above 81% of the gifted sample, The data suggest that using a childs performance on a cognitive battery may prove to be effective for identifying gifted minority children who have not previously been identified as having superior cognitive abilities.

New Screening Tests to Identify Young Children at Risk for Mild Learning Problems

Each of 34 prekindergarten and 39 kindergarten children with mild learning problems, those with mild mental retardation or learning disabilities, was matched with a child without learning problems on the basis of age, gender, and race/ethnicity. All children were presented the same cognitive screening test, which consisted of eight tasks. For the prekindergarten group, 91% of the children with learning problems and 91% of those without problems were accurately classified using a subset of five tasks. Two of these were identification tasks, where the children had only to point to choices provided; the other three tasks required children to generate verbal responses. For the kindergarten sample, the highest level of classification accuracy achieved for the children with mild learning problems was 87% and for the children without learning problems, 77%. These levels were also based on a subset of five tasks, but this subset consisted of four identification tasks and one generating task. Levels of classification accuracy were higher for the children classified as having mild mental retardation than for the group classified as having learning disabilities. Females had slightly higher scores than males on the kindergarten test, and the White/non-Hispanic group had higher scores than the other ethnic/racial groups on the prekindergarten test.

The screening potential of a taxonomic information task for the detection of learning disabled and mildly retarded children

Abstract Normally achieving (NA) students were compared to mildly mentally retarded (MMR) same-age peers (Experiment 1) and to learning disabled (LD) same-age peers (Experiment 2). In both studies the same task was presented. The students were asked to (a) describe similarities and differences among exemplars of 12 different categories, (b) identify the categories, and (c) name the exemplars. In Experiment 1, group comparisons yielded large, consistent performance differences between the mildly retarded and their normally achieving chronological age (CA) matches. High levels of sensitivity, specificity, and predictive accuracy were obtained when task performance was used to assign individual students to educational groups. These levels were maintained or improved when using a reduced set of 5 categories and the different descriptors measure. Using cut-off scores from this reduced set was also associated with accurate student identification. In experiment 2, there were small mean differences favoring the NA over the LD students on all 4 dependent measures but none was significant. None of the psychometric measures was associated with adequate levels of classification accuracy, although identification was improved when only a subset of categories and a single dependent measure was employed. However, a subset of LD students generated fewer different descriptors than any of their same age NA peers indicating that the task might be sensitive to a subset of LD children.

Identifying Cognitively Gifted Minority Students in Preschool.

Preschool children were administered a screening battery consisting of nine different cognitive tasks. The participants were tracked in the public school database. Based on the children’s first-grade educational status, 2 groups were formed: one consisting of children who were in regular education and the other composed of children who were in the gifted/talented program. The children’s preschool screening scores, summed over both the identification-tasks subset and the generating-tasks subset, enabled the identification of high-performing outliers from the regular education sample who performed very well compared to the school-identified gifted sample. However, a majority of minority students among the high-performing outliers were only identified with the generating measure. The superior first-grade achievement performance of 5 of these 7 and the finding that 3 of the 7 had been placed in the gifted program in second grade, attested to the effectiveness of this measure for identifying cognitively gifted minority preschoolers.

A Comparison of Complementary and Taxonomic Utilization: Significance of the Dependent Measure.

Preschool childrens utilization of complementary relations (e.g., environmental associates such as bird-nest, dog-bone) and taxonomic relations (e.g., items related categorically such as two or more fruit) was compared using three response measures that varied the task demands placed on the child. These three response measures were: generating a related verbal response to a single picture study card; selecting the one of two choice pictures that was related to the study pictures; justifying the picture choice selected. For one set, the correct response was related taxonomically to the study picture. For the second set, a correct response formed a complementary pair with the study picture. Based on a conceptual analysis of the task, it was argued that picture choice would be less demanding for the child than justification of the picture choice which in turn would be less demanding than generating an appropriate pair. It was predicted that as task demands increased performance would decrease for both complementary and taxonomic pairing. More importantly, functionally and perceptually available complementary pairs should be maintained at progressively higher levels relative to more abstract and hierarchically related taxonomic pairs. In addition, as task demands increase, complementary intrusions should produce one source of systematic error in the taxonomic condition. The results supported these predictions.

Identifying Young Children with Mild Cognitive Deficiencies.

Sixty-two 4- and 5-year-old exceptional children, with either mild mental retardation or learning disabilities, were matched on age, sex, and ethnicity with children who were making normal progress. All 62 pairs were presented a minibattery that included 6 cognitive tasks: two memory, three oddity, and a word definition task. The exceptional group performed more poorly than their normal matches on all dependent measures. Discriminant function analyses resulted in classification accuracy levels for the normally achieving group of no less than 89%. Ninety-seven percent of preschoolers with mild mental retardation were correctly identified, as were 84% of children classified as learning disabled. When the two groups with mild cognitive deficiencies were combined, 90% of the children with special educational needs were correctly classified. Cutoff scores applied to frequency distributions were associated with similar levels of accuracy. These results support the contention that a screening test composed of a broad array of cognitive measures should enable more effective identification of young children with mild mental retardation or learning disabilities.

Abstract categorization ability as a predictor of learning disability classification

Abstract Based on a theoretical analysis of the type of cognitive processing that should be sensitive to population differences, this study evaluated the diagnostic validity of a task measuring abstract categorization ability in six-, seven-, and eight-year-old learning disabled (LD) and non-LD peers. This research is part of a project, the major goal of which is the development of a cognitive-based preschool screening test for the early detection of children who may subsequently fail in school. Diagnostic validity is being evaluated within the context of the research strategy we have adopted. Data are presented that demonstrate that the component of abstract category knowledge that best discriminates LD children from non-LD peers, is knowledge of how members of abstract categories differ from each other. This is consistent with a priori predictions from theory.

Evaluating Potential Test Components for a New Cognitive Screening Test: a Preliminary Study

Four and five-year-old children, 22 with mild mental retardation and 27 with learning disabilities, were matched with normally achieving children of the same age, gender, and ethnicity. All were presented a battery of eight cognitive tasks being considered for inclusion in a new screening test. Five tasks were selected based on their high levels of classification accuracy. One of the selected tasks required the child to point to pictures in a systematic manner, one to find the odd or different picture, one to define a common word, one to generate items belonging to a specific category and one to verbalize differences among people. The results support the contention that a broad array of cognitive measures may enable more effective early identification of young children with mild learning problems.

A comparison of normally achieving, mildly retarded, and learning disabled students on a perceptually based oddity task

The oddity performance of mildly mentally retarded (MMR), learning disabled (LD) and normally achieving (NA) 6-through 8-year-old grade school students was compared in two-group (NA vs. MMR and NA vs. LD) and three-group (NA vs. MMR vs. LD) contrasts. The oddity arrays displayed on each card consisted of single or multiple letter-groups (1,2, ... 7 letters per group). Regardless of the number of letters per group, the odd array differed from the other two by one letter. Performance differences between the NA and LD groups were minimal, while both groups performed at significantly higher levels than the MMR group. The two-group contrasts indicated that failure level, one of two dependent measures examined, could accurately identify 84% of the MMR sample, and 97% of the NA group. The second measure, level of first error, enabled the isolation of a small subgroup of LD students from their chronological NA peers. Demonstrated cognitive differences in the competencies of the two handicapped groups on this as well as other tasks, raised questions about the advisability of a combined classification and/or educational setting for these two mildly impaired groups.