The Gifted Rating Scales is a teacher rating scale designed to help identify gifted students and is based on a multidimensional model of giftedness. By design, GRS minimizes observational bias and increases measurement accuracy. There are two forms: the GRS-P (for preschool/kindergarten level) and the GRS-S (designed specifically for students in grades 1-8).
The GRS measures students' aptitude in six areas:
Intellectual Ability: measures the child's verbal and nonverbal mental skills and intellectual competence. Items on this scale rate the child's memory, reasoning ability, problem solving and mental speed.
Academic Ability: measures the child's skill in dealing with factual and/or school-related material. Items rate readiness and advanced development/proficiency in reading, math and other aspects of the early childhood curriculum.
Creativity: measures the child's ability to think, act and/or produce unique, novel or innovative thoughts or products. Items rate the child's imaginative play, original thinking and inventive approach to situations or problems.
Artistic Talent: measures the child's potential for, or evidence of ability in, drama, music, dance, drawing, painting, sculpture, singing, playing a musical instrument and/or acting.
Leadership: measures the child's ability to motivate people toward a common goal.
Motivation: refers to the child's drive, tendency to enjoy challenging tasks, and ability to work well without encouragement or reinforcement. The motivation scale is not viewed as a type of giftedness, but rather as the energy that impels a young child to achieve.
thinkahol * on 09 Jun 11When we've got a problem to solve, we don't just use our brains but the rest of our bodies as well, researchers at the University of Wisconsin have determined. The researchers recruited 86 American undergraduates, half of whom were prevented from moving their hands using Velcro gloves that attached to a board. The others were prevented from moving their feet, using Velcro straps attached to another board - but had their hands free. From the other side of an opaque screen, an experimenter asked questions about gears in relation to each other. For example: "If five gears are arranged in a line, and you move the first gear clockwise, what will the final gear do?" The participants solved the problems aloud and were videotaped. The videotapes were analyzed for the number of hand gestures the participants used (hand rotations or "ticking" movements, indicating counting); verbal explanations indicating the subject was visualizing those physical movements; or the use of more abstract mathematical rules, without reference to perceptual-motor processes. The researchers then repeated the experiment and analysis with 111 British adults. The researchers found that the people who were allowed to gesture usually did so, and they also commonly used perceptual-motor strategies in solving the puzzles. The people whose hands were restrained (as well as those who chose not to gesture even when allowed), used abstract, mathematical strategies much more often. Their work will be published in an upcoming issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.
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