Analogical Reasoning and Giftedness: A Comparison Between Identified Gifted and Nonidentified Children

The purpose of this investigation was to assess the analogical reasoning ability of gifted young children and to examine the influence of gender, socioeconomic status (SES), and ethnicity on that ability. The subjects for the first phase of this investigation were 108 4-, 5-, and 6-year-olds placed in three preschool and primary grade programs; for the second phase, only the subset of gifted children (n = 55) was considered. The analogical reasoning performance of the group identified as gifted was compared with the performance of a group of nonidentified children. The Test of Analogical Reasoning in Children (TARC; Alexander, Willson, White, & Fuqua, 1987), an individually administered instrument, measured children's ability to solve geometric analogy problems. Gifted subjects outperformed nonidentified subjects on the geometric analogy task. Within the gifted group, the effects of gender and SES were nonsignificant, but a significant main effect of ethnicity was found. Post hoc analyses indicated that the mean difference in analogical reasoning reflected performance differences between the White and Hispanic groups. The TARC is proposed as an appropriate tool to identify young, gifted children. Instructional and assessment implications related to the use of analogical reasoning in gifted education are also discussed.