THE COGNITIVE EXPERIENCE AS A PSYCHOLOGICAL BASIS OF INTELLECTUAL GIFTEDNESS

This paper argues that cognitive experience is a psychological basis o f intellectual giftedness and a type of representation (i.e., how an i ndividual sees, understands, and interprets what is going on in the su rrounding reality) is a proto-phenomenon of intellectual Life of a per son. The essay critiques existing approaches in psychology of giftedne ss, introduces our own approach, and presents an exploratory experimen tal psychological study comparing ''gifted'' high school students with ''average'' high school students in physics and mathematics.