Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment EXPLORE Prep?

Agreed. I would have liked to know ahead of time. If I hadn't read this board, I doubt I would have ever heard about it. I vaguely remember that there might be an interests survey, but this sounds different.

Asking about intelligence before taking a test would be a big deal because there is evidence that priming subjects can significantly impact their testing performance.

What type of effect: negative or positive? I'm totally not on board with this questionnaire, but I guess that I am unsure on what they were primed on. Can you clarify?

Cricket2,

The direction of the effect varies depending on the subjects' pre-existing level of test anxiety and the nature of the priming - whether the questions tend to reinforce self-perceptions of competence vs. incompetence, internal vs. external locus of control, etc.

http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/1/1/2/8/8/p112882_index.html

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20435953

Yeah, that wouldn't be a good one for my dd10 as she already has an external locus of control issue going.

If I had been asked ahead of time if it would be ok to ask my child a series of questions on her perception of intelligence right before a test which is meant to challenge her the answer would have been NO.

Just one sentence about intelligence has been shown to affect a child's willingness to tackle new, difficult things.

Intelligence is the last thing I would have wanted her thinking about before an out of grade level test.

I suppose for some testers, it could be an issue. It never occured to me with my dd as she isn't a kid who stresses over testings.

This a tangential thought but perhaps related:
In the 1970's, maybe you remember the show "Archie Bunkier." Carroll O'Connor was a white, lower-income bigot. His jokes about bigotry seem silly and obviously jokes.
However, when they did polls/research on the issue, they found that:
1) If you were not prejudiced, you saw the show for what it was- making fun of racists like Archie.
2) If you were a prejudiced person, seeing Archie Bunker be a racist reinforced those stereotypes. THose people thought they were watching a reality show and that it was okay to be a racist.

Any recollection where you might have heard about the "interests survey"? I don't remember anything about that when I signed my dd up, but it was a late-night task. Who knows what I might have glossed over...

What I remember was something about matching up interests, summer programs, and scholarship opportunities. Whatever I read, it was probably something I found online last summer when I was first researching Explore. It could have been for a different talent search. I haven't been able to find it again with Google. Does anyone want to call Numats?