Cognitive similarities between academically and socially gifted students

Research conducted on academically gifted children's problem‐solving abilities suggests that heightened cognitive flexibility is an important component of academic intelligence. For example, academically gifted children are better able to adapt prior knowledge to formulate solutions to novel problems than other people. To date, little research has focused on applying these findings to the social domain. We propose that social‐cognitive flexibility (i.e., the ability to adapt prior social knowledge to formulate solutions to new interpersonal situations) is an important component of social intelligence. This article draws a comparison between the structure of academic and social intelligence, and speculates an important relationship exists between flexible social problem‐solving and social gift‐edness.