Sustained Attention in Intellectually Gifted Children Assessed Using a Continuous Performance Test

Abstract

This study aimed to investigate two aspects of sustained attention in intellectually gifted children: first, the differences to intellectually average children; second, the differences between receiving standard education and enrichment education. Study 1 compared sustained attention between 24 intellectually gifted and 26 intellectually average children. The results showed that intellectually gifted children had better performance than their average peers, not only for the whole task but also on all indices. Study 2 compared sustained attention between 24 intellectually gifted children who received standard education and 24 intellectually gifted children who received enrichment education. The results showed that intellectually gifted children who received enrichment education performed better than those who received standard education. These findings are consistent with previous work and provide support for the implementation of enrichment education for intellectually gifted children. © 2013 Shi et al.