Abstract:

The dynamic socio-economic and political metamorphoses of the human community in the 21st century, which E. Toffler called the "Third Wave" of the civilization development, put forward new, ever higher demands on the abilities, talents, and, in general, on the personality of a modern human. This explains the unrelenting interest of scientists and practitioners in the study and diagnosis of abilities, giftedness of children and youth and the relevance of psychological research on abilities. schoolchildren at the present stage.

The aim of the study was to study the intellectual and personal potential of children of primary school age, to identify children with high abilities (with "signs of giftedness").

Research methodology:
L.S. Vygotsky cultural-historical theory of the psyche development, understanding of abilities as a component of personality, naturally developing in the process of ontogenesis and having an individual measure of severity. In this study, the authors proposed to differentiate the abilities of children into three levels:
- a high level of ability development (“signs of giftedness”),
- average level (normative),
- below average ("in the zone of proximal development" - "ZPD").

Research methods:
theoretical analysis of foreign and domestic scientific literature on the problem of diagnosing the abilities of schoolchildren methods of psychological diagnostics of the intellectual and creative abilities of schoolchildren (including the author's method for diagnosing creative abilities "What's in the Magic Box?"), mathematical methods for processing the results of the experiment.
The article also presents the author's methodology "Map of indicators of cognitive and creative abilities of children."
The study was conducted in 13 regions of the Republic of Kazakhstan. A total of 158 junior schoolchildren aged 7-9 years were examined.

According to the results of the survey, it was revealed:
1) 14 children (9%) with a high level of cognitive and creative abilities, that is, children with "signs of giftedness".
These children are characterized by such characteristics as:
- good speech development, fluent use of speech, humanitarian abilities prevail. They use not only memorized adult phrases, but easily speak "in their own words", their speech is quite rich.
- high level of logical thinking: ability to classify, generalize concepts.
- high rates of creative abilities;
- high level of development of hand-eye coordination.

2) 5 children (3%) were identified who received high results in 1-2 methods and average results in other methods, which indicates that they have potential abilities that can be developed in the future.

Conclusions:
These characteristics were revealed during the primary examination of children. Undoubtedly, longer observation and extended psychological diagnosis of children can provide a comprehensive qualitative description of the development of children's abilities and giftedness.

Keywords:

Intellectual and creative abilities, younger schoolchildren, research methods, methodology for diagnosing abilities.