Giftedness and cultural accumulation: an information processing perspective

There appears to be differing approaches, in modern education, to the identification and development of gifted students, but researchers are beginning to find some cohesiveness through approaches that examine giftedness from within broad views of human cognition and behavior. This paper takes such an approach by considering learning and memory as concerned with the processing of environmental information and its accumulation across society, where such cultural accumulation results from environmental interaction. This paper outlines a framework, developed from studies of learning and memory and environmental interaction, which is based in a novel description of information and information processing systems. This framework may be useful in providing a new way of thinking about human cognition and behavior in an evolutionary context as well as in relation to the overall accumulation of culture across human society. This framework may be useful, therefore, in examining giftedness by providing useful insights into the identification and development of gifted students, in particular, those with the high levels of expertise considered valuable as human cultural accumulation.