Task Complexity and the Speed and Efficiency of Elemental Information Processing: Another Look at the Nature of Intellectual Giftedness

"According to much contemporary research and theory in human information-processing, the main difference between intellectually gifted and normal individuals is the effectiveness of higher-order or metacognitive processes ... . A relatively minor role is attributed to differences in the lower-order cognitive processes (e.g., encoding, short-term memory scanning, and retrieval of information from long-term memory) that un­derlie all thought and action and are orchestrated by the metacognitive processes ... . A considerable amount of recent evidence, however, suggests that ele­mental information-processing abilities may be more importantly related to intellectual giftedness than previously considered ......" 

J. H. Kranzler, P. H. Wang & A. R. Jensen (1994)