The influence of Piagetian level, IQ and age on derivative recognition in gifted primary students

The present study examined the relationship of gifted children's Piagetian levels to their responses to a task which required them to select (and logically justify) the English derivative of a Latin word from a semantic distracter, an orthographic distracter and a legitimate derivative similar to the Latin root in both meaning and spelling. Thirty-four gifted five- to eleven-year-olds were administered eight Piagetian tasks and the derivative recognition task (DRT). A regression model (DRT=b1Piagetian score + b2Age + b3IQ + c) was found to account for sixty-eight per cent of the DRT variance, with Piagetian score the only significant contributor to prediction.