New Content From Perspectives on Psychological Science

Making Sense of the World: Infant Learning From a Predictive-Processing Perspective
Moritz Köster, Ezgi Kayhan, Miriam Langeloh, and Stefanie Hoehl

According to the predictive-processing framework, individuals’ ability to successfully navigate their environment relies on how well they optimize predictions about the consequences of their behavior. Here, Köster and colleagues apply this framework to infancy research. They suggest thinking about how infants learn to predict the effects of their actions on their environments. This might provide a unifying perspective on phenomena of infant development and learning that may seem unrelated (e.g., learning principles, motor and proprioceptive learning, basic understanding of the environment). The researchers discuss implications for theory, research, and application.

Talent Development in Achievement Domains: A Psychological Framework for Within- and Cross-Domain Research
Franzis Preckel, Jessika Golle, Roland Grabner, et al.

The talent-development-in-achievement-domains (TAD) framework aims to describe and guide research on achievement and its development within and across domains, such as academics, music, and visual arts. It focuses on measurable psychological constructs and their meanings at different levels of talent development. TAD was developed by 11 researchers from different fields of psychological research in talent development who met during a 2-day summit. This review provides examples of TAD’s application to mathematics, music, and visual arts. It also indicates open questions to be addressed in future research.

Some Roads Lead to Psychology, Some Lead Away: College Student Characteristics and Psychology Major Choice
Martin C. Yu, Nathan R. Kuncel, and Paul R. Sackett

Yu and colleagues analyzed the characteristics and college trajectories of nearly one million students at 249 colleges and universities, comparing psychology with nonpsychology majors. Students who majored in psychology were not initially interested in the field, but those who had more exposure to psychology in high school were more likely to enter and stay in psychology. College students with poorer performance as science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) majors often transferred into psychology, whereas those with higher performance transferred from psychology into STEM majors.