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This article proposes a critical reading of the existing literature on cognitive functioning and the development of gifted children. The relationship is examined between intellectual precocity and two main fields of investigation : operational development within the piagetian conceptual framework and the use of strategies in problem- solving situations. This synthesis shows that the cognitive genesis of gifted children is characterized by both irregularities and dissynchronies. Moreover, in problem- solving situations, gifted children function in a way (in terms of capacities of transfer and generalization of a mode of response, and the effectiveness of the inhibition and activation processes of schémas...) that reveals greater control of cognitive activity and a richer basis of metacognitive knowledge than average children. Most of the tasks examined suggest that the functioning of gifted children is characterized by a distinctive cognitive mobility and a tendancy to favor an analogical mode of processing.
