McCarthy
Spring 2013
Psychology
Chapter Reaction: Cognition Cognition or thinking is defined as “a mental activity that goes on in the brain when a person is processing information – organizing it, understanding it, and communicating it to others” (Ciccarelli & White, 2011 p. 254). Lewis M. Terman, a psychologist, selected 1,528 children to participate in a longitudinal study (Ciccarelli & White, 2011). In this experiment, there were 857 boys and 671 girls (Ciccarelli & White, 2011). These students had IQs from 130 to 200 (Ciccarelli & White, 2011). Earlier on, this study showed that the gifted were skilled leaders and socially well adjusted (Ciccarelli & White, 2011). These gifted students were also “above average in height, weight, and physical attractiveness, putting an end to the weakling genius” (Ciccarelli & White, 2011 p. 278). “Terman was able to demonstrate not only that his gifted children were not more susceptible to illness than the general population, but he was able to show that they were actually more resistant to mental illnesses than these of average intelligence” (Ciccarelli & White, 2011 p. 278). These students were mostly successful as adults, since this study is still going on today. This study “still remains one of the most important and rich sources of data on an entire generation” (Ciccarelli & White, 2011 p. 279). This study can most definitely be used to improve the outlook of “average” intelligent students. Even though there were slight flaws in this study it came out to be successful. In this study, the original people in this study today have “earned more academic degrees and had higher occupational and financial success than average” (Ciccarelli & White, 2011 p. 278). More studies have been done to examine the gifted people and see if their identity as students had anything in common to later life