Psychology 3130A/B Lecture Notes - Lecture 13: Analytic Reasoning, Surface Detail, Deep Structure And Surface Structure
22 Jun 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
Week 14/Chapter 11: Expertise and Expert Thinking
Defining Expertise
- What is expertise
oMust pass three tests
1. Must lead to performance that is consistently superior to that of the expert’s peers
(superior performance)
2. Produces concrete results (concrete results)
3. True expertise can be replicated and measured in a lab (replicable performance)
- Experts are highly trained
oThe amount of trained they have received and the degree to which they have accumulated
dedicated practise in their field is a fundamental definition of expertise
oHas a set of skills for solving new problems or identifying operators that apply to a new problem
for ill-formed problems
- Experts think like Experts
oNeed less time to make decisions about a salient stimulus
oCan perceive deep structure of a problem and ignore irrelevant surface detail (higher level
perception)
- Experts can be defined in three ways
o1. Produce superior performance
o2. Focuses on the amount and quality of training
o3. How the expert thinks differently from the novice
The Role of Deliberate Practise
- 10,000 Hour Rule (Ericsson 1993)
- Empirical support for the 10,000 rules
oEricsson suggests people who have achieved expertise were likely to have spent at least 20 hours
a week over the course of ten years dedicated to practising and mastering the skills necessary to
become an expert in that field
oMusicians with the highest level of achievement were those who had spent close to 20 hours a
week are more devoted to deliberate and focused practise
- Critiques of the 10,000 hours rule
oSuggestions that 10,000 of practise at anything results in expertise in an oversimplification
oPractise plays a role but is not the only prerequisite
oDeliberate practise was not an explanatory factor for variance in performance in professional
expertise
Practise is important for games/music/sport (18-26% performance accounted for by
practise) but not as important for education and professions (1-4%)
The Effect of Expertise on Cognition
- Memory
oThe way experts perceive a situation influences what they recall (DeGroot; Chase & Simon)
oExperts show improved memory for facts within their domain
The source of their expertise must be related to the efficiency of memory recall rather
than their reasoning in general
oExpert and novice chess players are shown two chess boards for ten seconds, one is a commonly
seen series of positions and the other one is completely random and illegal in some places. After
ten seconds they were asked to recreate where the pieces were on the board. The experts were
very easily able to recreate the board commonly seen because of their increased chess memory.
The novices were not able to do this accurately. Neither could recreate the random board because
they had never seen a chess board configured in that way
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Experts think like experts: need less time to make decisions about a salient stimulus, can perceive deep structure of a problem and ignore irrelevant surface detail (higher level perception) Experts can be defined in three ways: 1. Focuses on the amount and quality of training: 3. How the expert thinks differently from the novice. Practise is important for games/music/sport (18-26% performance accounted for by practise) but not as important for education and professions (1-4%) Memory: the way experts perceive a situation influences what they recall (degroot; chase & simon, experts show improved memory for facts within their domain. After ten seconds they were asked to recreate where the pieces were on the board. The experts were very easily able to recreate the board commonly seen because of their increased chess memory. The novices were not able to do this accurately. Neither could recreate the random board because they had never seen a chess board configured in that way.
