Talent Development in Achievement Domains: A Psychological Framework for Within- and Cross-Domain Research

TLDR

Achievement in domains such as academics, music, or visual arts is central to modern societies, and various psychological models attempt to explain its development. The authors propose the TAD framework to guide empirical research within and across achievement domains by focusing on measurable psychological constructs at different talent‑development levels. The TAD framework is a general talent‑development model that can be applied across many achievement domains. Examples in mathematics, music, and visual arts demonstrate the TAD framework’s suitability for building domain‑specific models and highlight many research gaps.

Abstract

Achievement in different domains, such as academics, music, or visual arts, plays a central role in all modern societies. Different psychological models aim to describe and explain achievement and its development in different domains. However, there remains a need for a framework that guides empirical research within and across different domains. With the talent-development-in-achievement-domains (TAD) framework, we provide a general talent-development framework applicable to a wide range of achievement domains. The overarching aim of this framework is to support empirical research by focusing on measurable psychological constructs and their meaning at different levels of talent development. Furthermore, the TAD framework can be used for constructing domain-specific talent-development models. With examples for the application of the TAD framework to the domains of mathematics, music, and visual arts, the review provided supports the suitability of the TAD framework for domain-specific model construction and indicates numerous research gaps and open questions that should be addressed in future research.