Personality characteristics of senior adolescents with indicators of intellectual giftedness

Statement of the problem. The article substantiates the actuality of the study into the psychological characteristics of gifted children and students in the light of the increased interest of educational organizations and the professional community to people with outstanding abilities in various fields of activity. A brief review of the key problems of modern psychology of giftedness is presented: the complexity and ambiguity of the concept of giftedness, its structure and criteria for its definition, mechanisms and features of its development, plenty of methodological and empirical paradoxes in the study of the phenomenon of giftedness; the age-psychological aspects of the development of giftedness and the probability of inversion of its development, the possibility of both harmonious and disharmonious way of development of a gifted child. The author emphasizes understanding of intellectual giftedness as a gradually developing competence, acting as the basis of effective activity, and, due to the mechanisms of its development, characteristic rather of adults than children. The purpose of the article is elaboration of the psychological profile of modern students with indicators of intellectual giftedness on the basis of the results of an empirical study into typological personality traits. The research methodology is based on psychometric approach to the study of giftedness, namely, typological personality questionnaires, a specialized non-verbal intelligence test, the method of expert assessment and the method of correlation analysis were used. Within the framework of the research methodology, the use of the term “students with indicators of intellectual giftedness” is justified. Research results. Based on the results of psychological diagnostics of the level of non-verbal intelligence, typological personality traits and the use of methods for processing empirical data, students with indicators of intellectual giftedness were identified, the correlations between the level of non-verbal intelligence and typological personality traits of senior adolescents were identified and described. Conclusion. The article presents a theoretical analysis of the current state of the problem of giftedness, existing paradoxes and gaps. Based on the results of the empirical study, the psychological profile of senior adolescents with indicators of intellectual giftedness was clarified, and the prospects for further research into the problem were determined.