Foundations of Diagnosing an Individual’s Intellectual and Creative Giftedness

Abstract

The article argues for the urgency of research on an individual’s intellectual and creative
giftedness and emphasizes the theoretical, psychological, pedagogic, and socio-economic
significance of the problem. It is claimed that the psychological practices in education may result in
negative consequences through lack of high validity methods of diagnosing mental (intellectual
and creative) giftedness. The selection of relevant psychodiagnostic procedures and methods of
working with gifted individuals must be determined by a psychologically substantiated systemic
theory of giftedness which is based on contemporary ideas of uniqueness and originality of the
above-mentioned integral phenomena of the human psyche.
The author provides a critical analysis of the psychometric (testometric) approach to diagnosing
intellectual and creative giftedness (IQ index and creativity index). It is claimed that standardized
tests are a priori unfit to objectively measure either the actual or the potential mental giftedness of
an individual.
The article explores the classifications of giftedness types in terms of quantitative criteria
(indices), personality traits, occupations, motivation. The author questions the correctness of
positing ‘creativity’ as an independent type of giftedness. It is argued that mental (intellectual and
creative) giftedness is an inseparable structural and functional unity, a systemic attribute of psyche
and is revealed as talents, personality traits and metacognitive experience in various activities.
The author argues for the cognitive style approach to diagnosing mental giftedness. It is
hypothesized that it can serve as a theoretical foundation for developing a systemic technique of
diagnosing general giftedness, complies with the main principles of humanizing the educational
space in Ukraine and is truly child-oriented, i.e. considers every individual’s uniqueness and
inimitability.