The performance of achieving and underachieving gifted adolescents was compared on achievement subtests requiring either analytic/convergent or holistic / divergent cognitive processing Underachievers ex hibited a significant performance discrepancy between these two types of subtests that favored those requiring holistic rather than analytic information processing. The achievers showed no such discrepancy. Under achievers then, perform as well as as achievers on tasks which require holistic processing but do not perform as well on detailed or computational tasks which require precision, attention to detail, and/or convergent problem solving.
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