"The Expert Mind"
As a follow-on to my earlier post concerning how people develop expertise, I'll provide a quick summary of an article on "The Expert Mind" in the August issue of Scientific American. In the article, Philip E. Ross, a contributing editor, explains these three points:- Because skill at chess can be easily measured and subjected to laboratory experiments, the game has become an important tool for testing theories in cognitive science.
- Some scientists theorize that chess grandmasters, contrary to what one might expect, do not depend on above-average analytical powers, but rather organize their knowledge of chess positions into chunks, which in toto comprise a large structured store of knowledge. The theory is that grandmasters retrieve relevant chunks quickly from long-term memory and manipulate them in working memory.
A shortcoming of the chunking theory is that it does not "fully explain some aspects of memory, such as the ability of experts to perform their feats while being distracted." Ross cites work of Anders Ericsson and colleagues that suggests that experts are able to manipulate information stored in long-term memory (as opposed to simply retrieving the information).
Ross also describes an alternate theory of Fernand Gobet. Gobet theorizes that experts use "templates" to structure information in long-term memory. The expert can "fill in" a template in various ways in order to consider a range of related chunks of information. - To accumulate the knowledge they use, grandmasters typically engage in years of effortful study (deliberate practice), continually tackling challenges that lie just beyond their competence.
The top performers in music, mathematics and sports appear to gain their expertise in the same way, motivated by competition and the joy of victory.
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Note: Ross does not handle the issue of talent in an entirely satisfactory way. Although evidence on experts indicates that "motivation appears to be a more important factor than innate ability in the development of expertise," one cannot infer from this that innate ability is of minor importance. As discussed in my earlier post, above-average talent surely is necessary, if not sufficient, to rise to the very top ranks of musicians, mathematicians, and some (if not all) sports. Perhaps research will eventually establish that in business, by contrast, the importance of hard work (including deliberate practice) relative to talent is greater than in music, mathematics, and sports.
posted by Karen Nelson @ 10:37 PM
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