Personality and Family Variables and Exceptionally Gifted Boys' Creative Potential.

The purpose of this longitudinal project was to determine the influence of the family upon the early development and implementation of a gifted child's talent. Researchers examined two samples of exceptionally gifted boys and their families. One sample had cognitive scores within the 99th percentile in the mathematics-science domain; the other had IQ's over 150. The study was based on the following set of postulates: (1) creativity and intelligence share a number of attributes and perform in similar ways within a person's interactions with his environment; (2) the gifted person must undergo several developmental transformations that change their early giftedness into appropriate dispositions; (3) these transformations begin within the family but become refined by formal and informal education; (4) the family directs a child's early giftedness into progressively more suitable interests; (5) giftedness has a developmental history of its own. Results demonstrated statistical support for the association between the measures of creative potential and creative performance; moreover, the high IQ sample had creativity scored more closely tied to family variables that the math-science group. Researchers concluded that different types of cognitive exceptionality relate to different patterns of family experiences as conveyed by measn of their parents' personality traits. (RB)