Mei Tan

Gifted Identification with Aurora: Widening the Spotlight.

The current need to think globally over the long term has necessarily altered perspectives in education. Expectations for educational outcomes have increased over the last century for all students and, in many societies, diverse educational programs are available for those who are deemed to be particularly gifted. However, many children are likely to have intellectual gifts that are not easily revealed by the narrow range of cognitive and academic assessments typically employed by schools and, as a result, their abilities and potentials may remain unrealized. Who are these children and how can we best identify them? Assessment procedures designed for the identification of gifted students have become more refined in many cases, but there is an ever-present danger of having too narrow a perspective. This study demonstrates how an assessment approach based on a theory of intelligence encompassing multiple abilities may be useful in broadening the scope of conceptions and measures of giftedness.

The Metacognitive Component of Academic Self-Concept: The Development of a Triarchic Self-Scale

Self-concept—more specifically academic self-concept—and its connection to academic achievement have long been studied. It has been widely accepted that one’s self-concept is formed through interaction with one’s environment and significant others. Here we suggest that an internal metacognitive component of self-concept is also critical to its development. This hypothesis is investigated here by the development of a metacognitive-academic self-concept scale as part of a larger battery based on Sternberg’s triarchic model of successful intelligence. The academic self-concept scale’s psychometric properties, with respect to both children and adults, and its correlations with a group-administered cognitive assessment are presented. Additionally, a series of Q-factor analyses of the results on the scale are provided, revealing multiple distinguishable academic self-concept profiles. Collectively, these data suggest that a self-concept scale regarding one’s abilities can provide an additional source of information for the cognitive profiles of students.

Language development of internationally adopted children: Adverse early experiences outweigh the age of acquisition effect.

UNLABELLED We compared English language and cognitive skills between internationally adopted children (IA; mean age at adoption=2.24, SD=1.8) and their non-adopted peers from the US reared in biological families (BF) at two time points. We also examined the relationships between outcome measures and age at initial institutionalization, length of institutionalization, and age at adoption. On measures of general language, early literacy, and non-verbal IQ, the IA group performed significantly below their age-peers reared in biological families at both time points, but the group differences disappeared on receptive vocabulary and kindergarten concept knowledge at the second time point. Furthermore, the majority of children reached normative age expectations between 1 and 2 years post-adoption on all standardized measures. Although the age at adoption, age of institutionalization, length of institutionalization, and time in the adoptive family all demonstrated significant correlations with one or more outcome measures, the negative relationship between length of institutionalization and child outcomes remained most robust after controlling for the other variables. Results point to much flexibility and resilience in childrens capacity for language acquisition as well as the potential primacy of length of institutionalization in explaining individual variation in IA childrens outcomes. LEARNING OUTCOMES (1) Readers will be able to understand the importance of pre-adoption environment on language and early literacy development in internationally adopted children. (2) Readers will be able to compare the strength of the association between the length of institutionalization and language outcomes with the strength of the association between the latter and the age at adoption. (3) Readers will be able to understand that internationally adopted children are able to reach age expectations on expressive and receptive language measures despite adverse early experiences and a replacement of their first language with an adoptive language.

Academic Achievement Among Juvenile Detainees

The literature has long pointed to heightened frequencies of learning disabilities (LD) within the population of law offenders; however, a systematic appraisal of these observations, careful estimation of these frequencies, and investigation of their correlates and causes have been lacking. Here we present data collected from all youth (1,337 unique admissions, mean age 14.81, 20.3% females) placed in detention in Connecticut (January 1, 2010–July 1, 2011). All youth completed a computerized educational screener designed to test a range of performance in reading (word and text levels) and mathematics. A subsample (n = 410) received the Wide Range Achievement Test, in addition to the educational screener. Quantitative (scale-based) and qualitative (grade-equivalence-based) indicators were then analyzed for both assessments. Results established the range of LD in this sample from 13% to 40%, averaging 24.9%. This work provides a systematic exploration of the type and severity of word and text reading and mathematics skill deficiencies among juvenile detainees and builds the foundation for subsequent efforts that may link these deficiencies to both more formal, structured, and variable definitions and classifications of LD, and to other types of disabilities (e.g., intellectual disability) and developmental disorders (e.g., ADHD) that need to be conducted in future research.

Characteristics of the Home Context for the Nurturing of Gifted Children in Saudi Arabia.

This study investigates factors in the home environment and their influence on children’s analytical, creative, and practical skills. A sample of 294 gifted children (195 male) was recruited from grades 4–7 in Saudi Arabia, where the family context is highly influenced by the principles of Islam. Results did not confirm the effect of birth order, but showed that (1) mother’s education was an important factor for gifted children’s creativity; (2) the number of boys in the family was negatively associated with gifted boys’ creativity (r = −.21); and (3) Quran-related learning experiences were positively related to gifted girls’ analytical (r = .46) and creative (r = .42) skills. Implications for understanding non-Western environments for gifted children are discussed.

Anxiety in Gifted Female Students in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

This study seeks to identify the extent of anxiety among gifted girls in Saudi Arabia and, further, to determine whether differences in anxiety levels exist according to grade. The study sample consisted of 66 female 6th and 7th graders, 11 to 14 years old, attending public school enrichment programs for gifted students in Jeddah Province, Saudi Arabia. The author assessed levels of anxiety among gifted students to ascertain whether these levels were above the average levels of anxiety as defined by the scale used. Differences were examined according to grade level using a t-test. The findings indicate that levels of anxiety in gifted girls are higher than the average defined by the scale. Furthermore, results of the study indicate that levels of anxiety in gifted girls tend to be higher in earlier grades, i.e., the degree of anxiety in gifted 6th grade girls is higher than that of gifted 7th graders.

Sources of Heterogeneity in Developmental Outcomes of Children With Past and Current Experiences of Institutionalization in Russia: A Four-Group Comparison.

The present study sought to compare 4 groups of age- and gender-matched children—(a) those reared in institutions for children without parental care in Russia; (b) those raised by their biological parents in Russia; (c) those adopted to the United States from Russian institutions; and (d) those born in the United States and raised by their biological parents—on indicators of cognition, language, and early learning. In addition, we aimed to compare the effects of the length of time spent in an institution, the age of initial placement in an institution, the age at adoption, and pre-institutional risk factors (i.e., prenatal substance exposure and prematurity and low birth weight) on the above-mentioned outcomes in the 2 groups of children with institutionalization experiences. Our results confirm previous reports demonstrating negative consequences of institutionalization and substantial ameliorating effects of adoption. They also underscore the complexity of the effects of institutionalization and adoption, showing that they are intertwined with the effects of pre-institutional risk factors.

Child internalizing problems and mother-child discrepancies in maternal rejection: Evidence for bidirectional associations

We investigated the bidirectional associations between mother–child discrepancies in their perceptions of maternal rejection and children’s internalizing problems over 10 years from pre/early adolescence to early adulthood. Mothers’ reports of rejection and involvement in the parent–child relationship, the children’s perception of the mother’s rejection, and children’s self-report of internalizing problems were collected from a sample of 360 low-income ethnically diverse urban mother–child dyads at three time points (T1, T2, and T3) with 5-year intervals. Children were on average 12.6 years old at T1 (54% girls). Using a series of nested path analyses, we found that mother–child discrepancies while reporting maternal rejection at T1 were predictive of lower ratings of maternal involvement at T2 (&bgr; = −.14), which predicted higher levels of internalizing problems at T3 (&bgr; = −.16). The presence of mother’s affective disorder was related to T1 mother–child discrepancies (&bgr; = .14). Regarding bidirectional associations, children’s internalizing problems predicted maternal involvement across all time points, whereas T2 maternal involvement predicted T3 child internalizing problems. Discrepancies showed small associations with child internalizing problems both concurrently and over time. The findings highlight the importance of early discrepancies in the perception of maternal rejection for child internalizing symptoms.