Psychological research of giftedness: The problem of theory and method

This article analyzes the current research state on the problem of giftedness in psychology. The authors draw attention to the fact that the leading indicator of giftedness, confirming its phenomenological reality, is a person’s high achievements in various fields of life, such as educational and extracurricular activities, professional activities, etc. This indicator is considered in most modern studies as the basis to understand the sources of giftedness, the possibilities of managing the processes of its development and formation. In view of this prevailing approach to giftedness, three groups of studies currently dominate in psychology, and three fundamen-tally different positions on giftedness exist. In the first approach, giftedness comes down to the phenomenon of creativity or the creative abilities of a person; in the second, to the phenomenon of intelligence and the establishment of the IQ level and the development of individual intellectual abilities. The third approach is aimed at overcoming the reduction of the problem of giftedness to any one indicator and involves the inclusion of many variables (cognitive, personal, social, etc.) in the research plan. The authors argue that the applied approach to giftedness understanding is not constructive, since it does not answer the key questions about the sources of development and the formation of giftedness, its structure, its developing dynamics in the process of school and vocational training, and professional activi-ty. The idea is formulated that the weakness of modern approaches to the study of giftedness, models of its diagnosis is explained by the absence of the theory of giftedness, in which the connection between aptitudes and giftedness of a person is consistently revealed. It is argued that the theory of aptitude and giftedness by V.D. Shadrikov allows one to solve a number of methodological, theoretical and experimental problems in the study of giftedness. This is primarily ensured by establishing of a methodological connection between the theory of aptitude, which distinguishes different types of aptitude (individual aptitude, aptitude of the subject of activity, personality aptitude), and understanding of their systemic relationship, which ensures high and ultrahigh achievements of a person in different areas of life.