Academically talented students were defined as students who exhibited talent
in academic fields at a particular stage of development. Thirty-three
academically talented students from a secondary school in the state of Selangor
were involved in the study. These students had achieved grade A in all subjects
sat for in a national standardized examination, the Lower Secondary Assessment
(Penilaian Menengah Rendah-PMR). An adapted version of an instrument, the
Cognitive Assessment System was used to measure the students’ cognitive
processing namely; Planning, Attention, Simultaneous, and Successive. Multi
dimensional scaling analysis was carried out on the data to reveal two prototypes of academically talented student in cognitive processing. Those who scored
highly in Attention also scored highly in Successive. However, their scores in
Planning and Simultaneous processes were low. Another prototype of
academically talented students scored low in Attention and Successive
processing. Nevertheless, their scores in Planning and Simultaneous were high.
These findings propose to suggest two types of cognitive processing mechanisms
among academically talented students. The first type of mechanism utilized
Attention and Successive cognitive processing, when their Planning and
Simultaneous cognitive processing were low. The second type of mechanism
utilized Planning and Simultaneous processing when their Attention and
Successive cognitive processing were low
