Developing a test for determining verbal short-term memories of gifted students

Abstract

The main purpose of this study is to develop a test for determining verbal short-term memories of gifted students. In the study, there were 115 gifted students, 36 non gifted students and 37 adults that were studying a doctorate or master’s degree were participated in. In the study, a test that consist of 9 stimuli were used. Nonparametric statistical analyses were used in the study. Kruskal-Wallis analysis for group comparisons and Mann-Whitney U analysis for follow-up analysis were utilized. Spearmen’s rho correlation analysis was used for analyzing the data of the test-retest application. According to findings of the study, the gifted students recalled more words than their peers did in terms of words recalled both orderly and randomly. Yet, they randomly recalled fewer words than the adults who were studying a doctorate or master’s degree. On the other hand, the gifted students recalled more words in an ordered way than the adults who were studying a doctorate and master’s degree. Results of the test-retest indicated that there was a relationship at a level of .63 between the values obtained from both ordered and random recall tasks in terms of the two applications.