Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Contributors
- PART I INTRODUCTION AND PERSPECTIVE
- 1 An Introduction to The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance: Its Development, Organization, and Content
- 2 Two Approaches to the Study of Experts' Characteristics
- 3 Expertise, Talent, and Social Encouragement
- PART II OVERVIEW OF APPROACHES TO THE STUDY OF EXPERTISE – BRIEF HISTORICAL ACCOUNTS OF THEORIES AND METHODS
- PART III METHODS FOR STUDYING THE STRUCTURE OF EXPERTISE
- PART IV METHODS FOR STUDYING THE ACQUISITION AND MAINTENANCE OF EXPERTISE
- PART V DOMAINS OF EXPERTISE
- PART VI GENERALIZABLE MECHANISMS MEDIATING EXPERTISE AND GENERAL ISSUES
- Author Index
- Subject Index
- References
This chapter is part of a book that is no longer available to purchase from Cambridge Core
2 - Two Approaches to the Study of Experts' Characteristics
from PART I - INTRODUCTION AND PERSPECTIVE
Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Contributors
- PART I INTRODUCTION AND PERSPECTIVE
- 1 An Introduction to The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance: Its Development, Organization, and Content
- 2 Two Approaches to the Study of Experts' Characteristics
- 3 Expertise, Talent, and Social Encouragement
- PART II OVERVIEW OF APPROACHES TO THE STUDY OF EXPERTISE – BRIEF HISTORICAL ACCOUNTS OF THEORIES AND METHODS
- PART III METHODS FOR STUDYING THE STRUCTURE OF EXPERTISE
- PART IV METHODS FOR STUDYING THE ACQUISITION AND MAINTENANCE OF EXPERTISE
- PART V DOMAINS OF EXPERTISE
- PART VI GENERALIZABLE MECHANISMS MEDIATING EXPERTISE AND GENERAL ISSUES
- Author Index
- Subject Index
- References
Summary
This chapter differentiates two approaches to the study of expertise, which I call the “absolute approach” and the “relative approach,” and what each approach implies for how expertise is assessed. It then summarizes the characteristic ways in which experts excel and the ways that they sometimes seem to fall short of common expectations.
Two Approaches to the Study of Expertise
The nature of expertise has been studied in two general ways. One way is to study truly exceptional people with the goal of understanding how they perform in their domain of expertise. I use the term domain loosely to refer to both informal domains, such as sewing and cooking, and formal domains, such as biology and chess. One could choose exceptional people on the basis of their well-established discoveries. For example, one could study how Maxwell constructed a quantitative field concept (Nersessian, 1992). Or one could choose contemporary scientists whose breakthroughs may still be debated, such as pathologist Warren and gastroenterologist Marshall's proposal that bacteria cause peptic ulcers (Chi & Hausmann, 2003; Thagard, 1998; also see the chapters by Wilding & Valentine, Chapter 31, Simonton, Chapter 18, and Weisberg, Chapter 42).
Several methods can be used to identify someone who is truly an exceptional expert. One method is retrospective. That is, by looking at how well an outcome or product is received, one can determine who is or is not an expert.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2006
References
(1984). When novices surpass experts: The difficulty of a task may increase with expertise. Journal of Experimental Psy-chology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 10, 483–495.Google Scholar
, & (1992). Expertise. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 1, 135–139.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chi, M. T. H. (1978). Knowledge structure and memory development. In (Ed.), Children's thinking: What develops? (pp. 73–96). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Chi, M. T. H., & Bassok, M. (1989). Learning from examples via self-explanations. In (Ed.), Knowing, learning, and instruction: Essays in honor of Robert Glaser (pp. 251–282). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
, , & (1981). Categorization and representation of physics problems by experts and novices. Cognitive Science, 5, 121–152.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chi, M. T. H., Glaser, R., & Rees, E. (1982). Expertise in problem solving. In (Ed.), Advances in the Psychology of Human Intelligence (Vol. 1, pp. 7–76). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Chi, M. T. H., & Hausmann, R. G. M. (2003). Do radical discoveries require ontological shifts? In (Ed.), International handbook on innovation (pp. 430–444). New York: Elsevier Science Ltd.Google Scholar
Cho, K. (2004). When experts give worse advice than novices: The type and impact of feedback given by students and an instructor on student writing. Unpublished dissertation, University of Pittsburgh.
, , , , & (1991). Framing bias among expert and novice physicians. Academic Medicine, 66 (suppl): S76–S78.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
(1971). A case study of graduate admissions: Application of three principles of human decision making. American Psychologist, 26, 180–188.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ericsson, K. A. (1996). The acquisition of expert performance: An introduction to some of the issues. In (Ed.)The road to excellence: The acquisition of expert performance in the arts and sciences, sports, and games (pp. 1–50). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
, , & (1993). The role of deliberate practice in acquisition of expert performance. Psychological Review, 100, 363–406.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, & (1996). Expert and exceptional performance: evidence on maximal adaptations on task constraints. Annual Review of Psychology, 47, 273–305.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
, , & (2000). How experts' adaptations to representative task demands account for the expertise effect in memory recall: Comment on Vincente and Wang (1998). Psychological Review, 107, 578–592.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ericsson, K. A., & Smith, J. (1991). Prospects and limits of empirical study of expertise: An introduction. In & (Eds.). Toward a general theory of expertise: Prospects and limits (pp. 1–38).Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Feltovich, P. J., & Barrows, H. S. (1984). Issues of generality in medical problem solving. In & (Eds.), Tutorials in problem-based learning (pp. 128–142). Maaastricht, Netherlands: Van Gorcum.Google Scholar
Ford, K. M., & Adams-Webber, J. R. (1992). Knowledge acquisition and constuctivist epistemology. In (Ed.), The psychology of expertise: Cognitive research and empirical AI (pp. 121–136). New York: Springer-Verlag.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, , , , , , & (1997). Biomedical knowledge in diagnostic thinking: the case of electrocardiogram (ECG) interpretation. European Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 9, 199–223.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, & (1987). Inexpert calibration of comprehension. Memory and Cognition, 15, 84–93.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
, & (1996). Recall of rapidly presented random chess positions is a function of skill. Psychonomic Bulletin and Reviews, 3, 159–163.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
, , & (2003). Medical errors as a result of specialization. Journal of Biomedical Informatics, 36, 61–69.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hatano, G., & Inagaki, K. (1986). Two courses of expertise. In , , & (Eds.), Child development and education in Japan (pp. 262–272). New York, NY: W. Y. Freeman and Company.Google Scholar
, & (1995). The price of expertise: Effects of experience on the water-level task. Psychological Science, 6, 90–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
(1999). The curse of expertise: The effects of expertise and debiasing methods on prediction of novice performance. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 5, 205–221.Google Scholar
, , , & (1987). Context factors in the activation of first diagnostic hypotheses: Expert-novice differences. Medical Education, 21, 471–476.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
(Ed.) (1992). The psychology of expertise: Cognitive research and empirical
AI. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hoffman, R. R. (1998). How can expertise be defined?: Implications of research from cognitive psychology. In , , & (Eds.), Exploring expertise (pp. 81–100). New York: Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, , & (2005). Minding the weather: How expert forecasters think. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Johnson, E. J. (1988). Expertise and decision under uncertainty: Performance and process. In , , & (Eds.), The nature of expertise (pp. 209–228). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Klein, G. A. (1993). A recognition primed decision (RPD) model of rapid decision making. In , , , & (Eds.), Decision-making in action: Models and methods (pp. 138–147). Norwood, NJ: Ablex.Google Scholar
Kozbelt, A. (2004). Creativity over the lifespan in classical composers: Reexamining the equal-odds rule. Paper presented at the 26th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society.
, , , & (1980). Models of competence in solving physics problems. Cognitive Science, 4, 317–345.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, & (1995). Four aspects of strategic change: Contributions to children's learning of multiplication. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 124, 83–97.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lesgold, A., Rubinson, H., Feltovich, P., Glaser, R., Klopfer, D., & Wang, Y. (1988). Expertise in a complex skill: Diagnosing X-ray pictures. In , , (Eds.), The nature of expertise (pp. 311–342). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
, , , & (1997). Expertise in the management of bushfires: Training and decision support. Australian Psychologist, 32(3), 171–177.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, , , & (1991). Analogical transfer and expertise in legal reasoning. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Making, 48, 272–290.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, & (2000), Expertise and age-related changes in components of intelligence. Psychology & Aging, Special Issue: Vol. 16(2), 293–311.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, & (1974). Artificial intelligence. Condon Lectures, Oregon /State System of Higher Education, Eugene, Oregon.Google Scholar
Nersessian, N. J. (1992). How do scientists think? Capturing the dynamics of conceptual change in science. In (Ed.), Cognitive models of science: Minnesota studies in the philosophy of science, Vol. XV (pp. 3–44). Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
(1965). Overconfidence in case-study judgments. Journal of Consulting Psychology, 29, 261–265.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
(1970). A mathematical model for the decision rule in Piaget's developmental stages. Acta Psychologica, 32, 301–345.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Patel, V. L., & Kaufman, D. R. (1995). Clinical reasoning and biomedical knowledge: implications for teaching. In & (Eds.), Clinical reasoning in the health professions (pp. 117–128). Oxford, UK: Butterworth-Heinemann Ltd.Google Scholar
Schliemann, A. D., & Carraher, D. W. (1993). Proportional reasoning in and out of school. In & (Eds.), Context and cognition: Ways of learning and knowing (pp. 47–73). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
, & (1993). On acquiring expertise in medicine. Educational Psychology Review, 5, 205–220.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
(1985). Training high performance skills: Fallacies and guidelines. Human Factors, 27(3), 285–300.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shanteau, J. (1984). Some unasked questions about the psychology of expert decision makers. In (Ed.), Proceedings of the 1984 IEEE conference on systems, man, and cybernetics. New York: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc.
Google Scholar
Simon, D. P., & Simon, H. A. (1978). Individual differences in solving physics problems. In (Ed.), Children's thinking: What develops? (pp. 325–348). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Google Scholar
(1977). Creative productivity, age, and stress: A biographical time-series analysis of 10 classical composers. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 35, 791–804.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sternberg, R. J. (1996). Costs of expertise. In (Ed.), The road to excellence: The acquisition of expert performance in the arts and sciences, sports, and games (pp. 347–354). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Sternberg, R. J., & Frensch, P. A. (1992). On being an expert; A cost-benefit analysis. In (Ed.), The psychology of expertise: Cognitive research and empirical AI (pp. 191–203). New York: Springer Verlag.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
(1998). Ulcers and bacteria I: Discovery and acceptance. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 29, 107–136.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
(1992). Memory recall in a process control system: A measure of expertise and display effectiveness. Memory and Cognition, 20, 356–373.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, & (1998). An ecological theory of expertise effects in memory recall. Psychological Review, 105, 33–57.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Voss, J. F., Greene, T. R., Post, T., & Penner, B. C. (1983). Problem solving skill in the social sciences. In (Ed.), The psychology of learning and motivation. (pp. 165–213). New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
, , & (1980). Text generation and recall by high-knowledge and low-knowledge individuals. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 19, 651–667.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, , & (2003). The influence of prior knowledge on constructive biases. Swiss Journal of Psychology, 62(4), 219–231.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weisberg, R. W. (1999). Creativity and know-ledge: A challenge to theories. In (Ed.), Handbook of Creativity (pp. 226–250). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
(1998). Expertise as mental set: The effects of domain knowledge in creative problem solving. Memory and Cognition, 26, 716–730.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
- 281
- Cited by