Identification of Giftedness in Early Childhood

This article starts with a survey of various topics relevant to the identification of exceptional talent in early childhood. To start, findings in the identification of cognitive abilities based on psychometric testing and their stability will be presented. This will be followed by an overview of research on information processing (attention and habituation, memory, capacity and durability, memory efficiency, strategies and metacognition) in early childhood and the significance of this work for the identification of giftedness. Following an overview of the identification of motivational and personality characteristics and their stability, findings on exceptional achievements (early reading, writing, calculating) and how well they can predict giftedness will be reported. Subsequently an overview will depict research findings on various characteristics associated with parents and the learning environment which are significant for the identification of giftedness in early childhood. Building on this research overview, a specific procedure with which giftedness can be identified in early childhood will be illustrated. The ENTER model (Ziegler & Stoeger, 2003, 2004a), which allows for identification on the basis of a wide array of giftedness models in practice, was chosen as a basis model for this identification. In this article, the identification model ENTER will be applied in conjunction with the Actiotope Model of Giftedness.