The present study examined the performance on five phases of critical thinking in gifted and nongifted children in two settings: ethical and neutral. Ninety-one children, 32 gifted (8-10 years old), 32 normally developing children matched for chronological age (8-10 years old) and 27 normally developing children matched for mental age (12-13 years old) completed critical thinking tasks. The findings confirmed that intellectually gifted children had higher critical thinking capacity than typically developing children. The results reveal that the basic factor determining best performances in critical thinking is mental age and not chronological age. However, critical thinking ability was the same in ethical and neutral settings. Analysis of the phases of critical thinking show that the first and the third phase, clarification and evaluation, specifically differentiates gifted from nongifted children. These phases refer to the ability to understand the type of problem rapidly and to assess the credibility of statements and to assess the logical strength of the actual or intended inferential relationships among statements, descriptions, questions or other forms of representation.
Keywords: critical thinking; ethical and neutral; giftedness; phases of critical thinking.