General Behavior Characteristics

Gifted children's behavior differs from that of their age-mates in the following ways:

• Many gifted children learn to read early, with better comprehension of the nuances of
  language.
  
• Gifted children often read widely, quickly, and intensely and have large vocabularies.
  
• Gifted children commonly learn basic skills better, more quickly, and with less practice.
  
• They are better able to construct and handle abstractions.
  
• They often pick up and interpret nonverbal cues and can draw inferences that other children
  need to have spelled out for them.
  
• They take less for granted, seeking the "hows" and "whys."
  
• They can work independently at an earlier age and can concentrate for longer periods.
  
• Their interests are both wildly eclectic and intensely focused.
  
• They often have seemingly boundless energy, which sometimes leads to a misdiagnosis of hyperactivity.
  
• They usually respond and relate well to parents, teachers, and other adults. They may prefer
  the company of older children and adults to that of their peers.
  
• They like to learn new things, are willing to examine the unusual, and are highly inquisitive.
  
• They tackle tasks and problems in a well-organized, goal-directed, and efficient manner.
  
• They exhibit an intrinsic motivation to learn, find out, or explore and are often very persistent. "I'd rather do it myself" is a common attitude.
  
  
  Learning Characteristics
  
  
  Gifted children are natural learners who often show many of these characteristics:
• They may show keen powers of observation and a sense of the significant; they have an eye
  for important details.
  
• They may read a great deal on their own, preferring books and magazines written for
  children older than they are.
  
• They often take great pleasure in intellectual activity.
  
• They have well-developed powers of abstraction, conceptualization, and synthesis.
  
• They readily see cause-effect relationships.
  
• They often display a questioning attitude and seek information for its own sake as much as
  for its usefulness.
  
• They are often skeptical, critical, and evaluative. They are quick to spot inconsistencies.
  
• They often have a large storehouse of information about a variety of topics, which they can
  recall quickly.
  
• They readily grasp underlying principles and can often make valid generalizations about
  events, people, or objects.
  
• They quickly perceive similarities, differences, and anomalies.
  
• They often attack complicated material by separating it into components and analyzing it
  systematically.

Creative Characteristics

Gifted children's creative abilities often set them apart from their age-mates. These characteristics may take the following forms:

• Gifted children are fluent thinkers, able to generate possibilities, consequences, or related
  ideas.
  
• They are flexible thinkers, able to use many different alternatives and approaches to problem
  solving.
  
• They are original thinkers, seeking new, unusual, or unconventional associations and
  combinations among items of information.
  
• They can also see relationships among seemingly unrelated objects, ideas, or facts.
  
• They are elaborate thinkers, producing new steps, ideas, responses, or other embellishments
  to a basic idea, situation, or problems.
  
• They are willing to entertain complexity and seem to thrive on problem solving.
  
• They are good guessers and can readily construct hypotheses or "what if" questions.
  
• They often are aware of their own impulsiveness and irrationality, and they show emotional
  sensitivity.
  
• They are extremely curious about objects, ideas, situations, or events.
  
• They often display intellectual playfulness and like to fantasize and imagine.
  
• They can be less intellectually inhibited than their peers are in expressing opinions and ideas, and they often disagree spiritedly with others' statements.