MORE FROM THE WATER JARS - A REANALYSIS OF PROBLEM-SOLVING PERFORMANCE AMONG GIFTED AND NONGIFTED CHILDREN

An earlier study of performance on water-jar combination problems conc luded that giftedness (defined by superior school performance) is asso ciated with metacognitive strength and flexibility in breaking an indu ced response set. Breaking sets is useful in bringing new perspectives to problem solving. Water-jar studies traditionally drop children who did not form the set, in this case 40% of the initial sample. The pre sent study reanalyzed the initial data but did not exclude the previou sly omitted subjects. Gifted subjects who failed to form the set actua lly made the most errors of any group, and they were more likely not t o recognize that they had made these errors. Other children who never formed the set were much like those who did. Therefore, gifted childre n do not always outperform others on cognitive tasks. There may be mot ivational reasons for this inferior performance.