Issue awareness in young highly gifted children: Do the claims hold up?

Abstract

Hollingworth (1942) observed that typical children become interested in “questions of origin and destiny” around the age of 12–13 (p. 279), and argued that early interest in such issues was an indication of gifted‐ness. Many have reiterated Hollingworth's claim that at an unusually young age highly gifted children become aware of philosophical, ethical, societal, and environmental issues. To test these claims, highly gifted 7 to 9 year‐olds were compared to agemates using data drawn from three sources: self report, parent report, and children's responses to issue‐laden drawings. Responses to issue‐laden drawings revealed considerably more issue awareness in the highly gifted than did self report data. Parents’ reports strongly supported the hypothesis that highly gifted children have early issue awareness. The disparity between children's and parents’ perceptions of these same phenomena is striking.