The Psychological Essence of the Child Prodigy Phenomenon: Sensitive Periods and Cognitive Experience

Abstract

The article presents a new approach to the understanding of the child prodigy phenomenon. According to this approach, the prodigy phenomenon is a result of the extremely accelerated mental development during sensitive periods that leads to the rapid growth of a child's cognitive resources and their construction into specific: cognitive experience. The latter is the psychological basis of extraordinary intellectual creative achievements and expresses itself in the prodigy's unique intellectual picture of the world. The psychological nature of the prodigy phenomenon is therefore formed by sensitive periods that should be viewed as its fundamental mechanism and by cognitive experience. This approach explains both the process of the prodigy phenomenon (i.e., prodigious development) and its product (i.e., prodigies' exceptional performance and achievements).

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