The Development of the High Ability Child

Erin M. Miller has a doctorate in Educational Psychology with a specialization in gifted and talented children from the University of Virginia. She has been active in the field of gifted education for 15 years, presenting at the National Association for Gifted Children (NAGC) each of those years. She has held multiple leadership positions for NAGC and AERA and is currently the Associate Editor for the Journal of Advanced Academics. She holds an associate professor of psychology position at Bridgewater College where she teaches General Psychology, Memory and Cognition, Biology of the Mind, Creativity and Problem-Solving, and Measurement and Statistics courses. Michael S. Matthews is a Professor and Program Director for the Academically/Intellectually Gifted graduate programs at UNC Charlotte where he teaches courses related to various aspects of gifted education. He is co-editor of Gifted Child Quarterly and has served as a Board Member of the National Association for Gifted Children. He is also past Chair of the Research on Giftedness, Creativity, and Talent group of the American Educational Research Association, and a former board member for the Metrolina Scholars Academy charter school and the North Carolina Association for the Gifted & Talented. He is author or editor of five books, around 45 peer reviewed articles, and over a dozen book chapters. He presents regularly at state, national, and international conferences, and his scholarship has been recognized with the Early Scholar Award (NAGC), the Pyryt Collaboration Award (AERA), and the Legacy Book Award from the Texas Association for the Gifted and Talented in the category of "Best Scholarly Work". Dante D. Dixson is an Assistant Professor of School and Educational Psychology at Michigan State University. He currently serves on the editorial boards of Gifted Child Quarterly, the Journal for the Education of the Gifted, School Psychology Review, and the Journal of Black Psychology. In addition, he is a board member for the Roeper Institute and the Michigan Association of Gifted Children. Dr. Dixson’s areas of expertise include the role of hope in the educational and psychological functioning of children and adolescents, psychosocial precursors of achievement, and the underrepresentation of minority and disadvantaged youth in gifted education.

Introduction 1. Key Methodological Issues in Researching Gifted Education and Advanced Academics 2. Physical Development of Gifted Students 3. The Psychology of Learning: Modalities and Their Application to Advanced Academics 4. The Role of Superior Attention and Memory Abilities in the Lives of Cognitively Advanced Individuals 5. Language Development and Education of Advanced Learners and Precocious Readers 6. Problem-Solving Characteristics in Gifted and Advanced Learners 7. Motivation and Achievement in Gifted and Advanced Learners 8. Individual Differences in Personality Among Cognitively Advanced Learners 9. The Psychological Adjustment of Gifted Children and Individuals with High Intellectual Ability 10. Conclusions and Implications for the Future