I like aculady's idea too: if the natural comparison class is highly talented, but the child is only average w.r.t. that class, then the parent might be more hesitant to accept the "gifted" label. Likewise, if the natural comparison class is closer to the mean, but the child clearly exceeds it, then the parent might be inclined to jump the gun. If "optimistic" and "pessimistic" are statistical labels then this explanation seems a good one.

But there's a more psychological interpretation of these terms that I thought was in play as well. I thought the idea was that, for example, the highly gifted parents are more likely to look for defeaters to the putative evidence under consideration. This is more like what people sometimes call "denial" around here. You see patterns of reasoning like, "I know the objective measures indicate a certain very high level, but is it really possible that the kid I know so well is like that?" Or "It's true that I've never actually met another kid as talented as this one, but I have read about them. And surely DS doesn't match up with those." I myself feel inclined to these kinds of rationalizations, and they seem distinct from the statistical pessimism that aculady's interpretation seems to explain. Do others see a pattern here as well?

Originally Posted by Dottie
I've learned to ask probing questions as follow ups.

What kinds of questions, Dottie?