Where gifted children do and do not excel on metacognitive tasks∗

Metacognition is an important component of advanced intellectual performance and, therefore, has been proposed to be more advanced in intellectually gifted than average children. However, existing research comparing gifted to average children's metacognitive abilities does not support this idea uniformly. Compared to average children, gifted children appear to have generally better declarative metacognitive knowledge and better ability to transfer strategies to situations distinct from those in which the strategy was learned. However, gifted children do not demonstrate consistently better strategy use, maintenance, or near transfer compared to average children. Nor do they display better cognitive monitoring ability compared to average children. Metacognition appears to be important to the development of high achievement in a domain. We argue that metacognitive abilities might be incorporated as additional criteria for entry into programs for the gifted beyond standard intelligence measures. Several identification methods which include metacognitive information are discussed.