| Abstract: | Effective diagnosis and appropriate fostering of giftedness require accurate knowledge of the nature and course of intellectual development. However, psychological theories developed until now have not paid sufficient attention to the influence of children on their own development. The study reported here shows that cognitively gifted children who display well developed exploratory behaviour interact with their environment in an active way. Confidence in exploring the environment, which children acquire as a result of favourable social processes, facilitates the emergence of problem solving behaviour. As a result, such children are able to expand their cognitive abilities independently on the basis of their own activity. The task for educators is to promote exploratory behaviour and systematically expand the child's repertoire of behaviours through the application of appropriate interaction strategies. |
