Hey all - sorry for repeating stuff I don't have first hand knowledge of.
I am just repeating what I've heard because the factoid is so appealing, and I know for a fact that when it comes to memorization, all kids are different, and different from themselves.
Example - a FOK fact will seem to glide in after one hearing for my DS. Other "Facts of Life" he seems to ignore. Experiencing them over and over, but not apparently "getting it." Learning to read a clock, times tables, typing, etc. took a long, long time. Perhaps not quite as long as for ND kids, but he hated the time he had to spend with double intensity.
Example - DS practices this musical insturment, 15 minutes a day, and again, suffers as much as a ND practicing 30 minutes, but gets as much out of it as well. I've have seen him "blow it" onstage presumably because he didn't put enough time in to get to automatisity.
I think we can be sure that many gifted kids are in a bad mood during memorization tasks. Some gifted kids learn quickly and easily if they are asked to use abstract thinking skills that same age ND kids don't have.
I particularly like the "Bunny and Elephant" analogy.
Feeding an Elephant
Highly gifted children learn not only faster than others, but also differently. Standard teaching methods take complex subjects and break them into small, simple bits presented one at a time. Highly gifted minds can consume large amounts of information in a single gulp, and they thrive on complexity. Giving these children simple bits of information is like feeding an elephant one blade of grass at a time - he will starve before he even realizes that anyone is trying to feed him.
[Excerpt from Helping Your Highly Gifted Child by Stephanie S. Tolan, ERIC EC Digest #E477, 1990]
from:http://www.hoagiesgifted.org/analogies.htm
I shared this with a teacher when DS was young, and didn't have the maturity to sit through the "bad feeling" part, that if we really want DS to eat the grass, we should try making garland out of it and hanging it on the trees - hoping to goes down with them undetected! She laughed and appeared to understand me. That's how the typing "got down" his craw.
But it's kind of tricky, in my opinion, figuring out which grass is worth the effort. I think it will differ in each situation.
Bottom line - what I should have said is "attractive as this idea is, I think one study is too few to base "gospel" on, and we should be careful about generalization. Our kids need to be though about as individuals.
Appologetically,
Trinity
