INTELLECTUAL ABILITIES AS HUMAN POTENTIAL AND RESOURCE

Abstract

The establishment of the human abilities issue, the identification of the main characteristics and features of the formation and development of intellectual abilities and their determination has been covered in this article. One of the most important problems is the matter of connecting abilities with activities. The main ideas indicate that abilities are formed and developed in the activity, their development is associated with the assimilation of social experience, and of great importance for their development are the processes of learning, communication, and education. The main developmental aspects of the research on intelligence as a general ability and as a set of independent abilities have been considered; the intelligence structure is distinguished as a set of intellectual abilities, i.e. the ability to solve specific problems. In the structure of cognitive abilities, one can identify a common factor that manifests itself in various indicators of cognitive processes. This common factor is the “cognitive resource” that underlies intellectual performance. M. Kholodna identifies the main aspects of the intelligence functioning, which characterize the four types of intellectual abilities. The possibilities of combinatorial abilities development and features of their manifestation in students’ educational activity are being found out. The phenomenon of “mental stimulation”, suggested by V. Druzhinin (occurs in the joint activities and communication of the child with adults), is characterized as a decisive factor in the development of children’s intelligence. The great importance of the “family intellectual climate” (D. Ushakov, V. Druzhinin) for the general intellectual development of children is emphasized. The results of numerous studies indicate an increase in the productivity of intellectual abilities as a result of training, coaching, formative experiment, special developmental classes, which are built taking into account the psychological patterns recorded in the theoretical ideas of the L. Vygotsky’s school.