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Expert - Performance - Its - Structure - and - Acquisition 725-747 PDF
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Expert Performance
Its Structure and Acquisition
K. Anders Ericsson and Neil Chamess
Counter to the common belief that expert performance 1989). The pioneering research comparing the perfor-
reflects innate abilities and capacities, recent research in mance of experts and beginners (novices) by de Groot
different domains of expertise has shown that expert per- (1946/1978) and Chase and Simon (1973) has generated
formance is predominantly mediated by acquired complex a great deal of research (Chi, Glaser, & Farr, 1988; Er-
skills and physiological adaptations. For elite performers, icsson & Smith, 1991b). A parallel development in com-
supervised practice starts at very young ages and is main- puter science has sought to extract the knowledge of ex-
tained at high daily levels for more than a decade. The perts by interviews (Hoffman, 1992) to build expert sys-
effects of extended deliberate practice are more far-reach- tems, which are computer models that are designed to
ing than is commonly believed. Performers can acquire duplicate the performance of these experts and make their
skills that circumvent basic limits on working memory expertise generally available. These efforts at artificial in-
capacity and sequential processing. Deliberate practice telligence have been most successful in domains that have
can also lead to anatomical changes resulting from ad- established symbolic representations, such as mathemat-
aptations to intense physical activity. The study of expert ical calculation, chess, and music (Barr & Feigenbaum,
performance has important implications for our under- 1981-1982: Cohen & Feigenbaum, 1982), which inci-
standing of the structure and limits of human adaptation dentally are the main domains in which prodigies and
and optimal learning. savants have been able to display clearly superior perfor-
mance (Feldman, 1980, 1986).1
The recent advances in our understanding of excep-
tional performance have had little impact on general the-
In nearly every field of human endeavor, the performance
ories in psychology. The new knowledge has not fulfilled
of the best practitioners is so outstanding, so superior
the humanistic goals of gaining insights from the lives of
even to the performance of other highly experienced in-
outstanding people about how people might improve their
dividuals in the field, that most people believe a unique,
lives. Maslow (1971) long ago eloquently expressed these
qualitative attribute, commonly called innate talent, must
goals:
be invoked to account for this highest level of perfor-
mance. Although these differences in performance are by If we want to know how fast a human being can run, then it is
far the largest psychologists have been able to reliably no use to average out the speed of a "good sample" of the pop-
measure among healthy adults, exceptional performance
has not, until recently, been extensively studied by sci-
entists. Lyle E. Bourne served as action editor for this article.
In the last decade, interest in outstanding and ex- K. Anders Ericsson, Department of Psychology, Florida State Uni-
versity; Neil Charness, Department of Psychology, University of Waterloo,
ceptional achievements and performance has increased Waterloo, Ontario, Canada (now at Department of Psychology, Florida
dramatically. Many books have been recently published State University).
on the topic of genius (for example, Gardner, 1993a; We wish to thank Janet Grassia, Andreas Lehmann, William Oliver,
Murray, 1989a; Simonton, 1984, 1988b; Weisberg, 1986, and Michael Rashotte for their valuable comments on drafts of this
1993), exceptionally creative individuals (D. B. Wallace article.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to K.
& Gruber, 1989), prodigies (Feldman, 1986; A. Wallace, Anders Ericsson, Department of Psychology, Florida State University,
1986), and exceptional performance and performers Tallahassee, FL 32306-1051.
(Howe, 1990;Radford, 1990; Smith, 1983). Of particular
1
interest to the general public has been the remarkable The field of visual art may offer at least one recent exception
ability of idiot savants or savants, who in spite of a very (Feldman, 1986). The Chinese girl Yani produced some acclaimed
paintings between the ages of three and six (Ho, 1989), but matters are
low general intellectual functioning display superior per- complicated by the fact that these paintings were selected by her father
formance in specific tasks and domains, such as mental (a professional painter) from more than 4,000 paintings completed by
multiplication and recall of music (Howe, 1990; Treffert, Yani during this three-year period (Feng, 1984).
Black pawn on d6
will take that
white pawn
White pawn on b4
Followed by will take that black
this move by pawn leaving it
white hanging pawn"
Note. Think-aloud protocols of a good club player (chess raling = 1657) and a chess expert (chess rating = 2004) collected by Charness (1981 a) are shown in bottom
panel to illustrate differences in evaluation and planning for one specific move, P-c5 (white pawn from c4 to c5), the best move for this position. Reported considerations
for other potential moves have been omitted. The chess expert considers more alternative move sequences, some of them to a greater depth than the club player does.
(From "Search in Chess: Age and Skill Differences" by N. Charness, 1981, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 7, p. 469. Copyright
1981 by American Psychological Association.)
such as physics and medical diagnosis. When novices in Similarly, medical experts comprehend and integrate the
physics solve a problem, they typically start with the information they receive about patients to find the correct
question that asks for, say, a velocity; then they try to diagnosis by reasoning forward, whereas less accom-
recall formulas for calculating velocities and then con- plished practitioners tend to generate plausible diagnoses
struct step by step a sequence of formulas by reasoning that aid their search for confirming and disconfirming
backward from the goal to the information given in the evidence (Patel & Groen, 1991).
problem. In contrast, more experienced subjects proceed Experts' internal representation of the relevant in-
by forward reasoning. As they read the description of the formation about the situation is critical to their ability
problem situation, an integrated representation is gen- to reason, to plan out, and to evaluate consequences of
erated and updated, so when they finally encounter the possible actions. Approximately 100 years ago Binet was
question in the problem text, they simply retrieve a so- intrigued by some chess players' claims that they could
lution plan from memory (Larkin, McDermott, Simon, visualize chess positions clearly when they played chess
& Simon, 1980). This finding suggests that experts form games without a visible chessboard (blindfold chess). Bi-
an immediate representation of the problem that system- net (1894) and subsequently Luria (1968) studied indi-
atically cues their knowledge, whereas novices do not have viduals with exceptional memory abilities, who claimed
this kind of orderly and efficient access to their knowledge. to visualize as a mental image the information presented
-0.6 J
21 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65
Age (yrs)
Note. Chess ratings scaled in standard deviation units, with performance at age 21 for each individual set to zero (data from Elo, 1965). Averaged scores across grand
masters shown with standard error bars. From "Expertise and Aging: Life in the Lab" Ip. 358] by N. Charness and E. A. Bosman in Aging and Cognition-. Knowledge
OrganizoHon and Utilization, T. H. Hess (Ed.), 1990, Amsterdam: Elsevier. Copyright 1990 by Elsevier. Adapted by permission.
The mediating mechanisms in younger and older different structure. Although it is convenient to collapse
experts' performance have been examined in laboratory a measure of expertise onto a unidimensional scale (such
studies developed under the expert performance ap- as chess rating or net words per minute for typing), this
proach. In typing, older experts who type at the same is an oversimplification that may obscure individual dif-
speed as younger experts are found to have larger eye- ferences in the underlying processes the mediate same-
hand spans that permit older experts to compensate level performance.
through advance preparation (Bosman, 1993; Salthouse,
The Role of Deliberate Practice
1984). Older chess experts' ability to select the best chess
move is associated with less planning than that of younger In the previous sections we described the evidence for the
experts at an equivalent skill level. This suggests that older necessity of deliberate practice for initially acquiring ex-
chess experts compensate through more extensive knowl- pert performance. The maintenance of expert perfor-
edge of chess (Charness, 1981a). Comparisons of older mance could be due to the unique structure of the mech-
and younger expert pianists' ability to perform simple anisms acquired in expert performance or to a level of
and complex sequences of key strokes requiring bimanual deliberate practice maintained during adulthood or both.
coordination reveal no or small differences, whereas the The most marked age-related decline is generally
same comparisons between older and younger amateur observed in perceptual-motor performance displayed in
pianists reveal clear decrements with age that increase many types of sports. High levels of practice are necessary
with the complexity of the tasks (Krampe, 1994). Such to attain the physiological adaptations that are found in
age effects require greater diversity in the models proposed expert performers, and the effects of practice appear to
to explain expertise. It is now evident that at least in be particularly large when intense practice overlaps with
typing and chess, two individuals at the same level of skill physical development during childhood and adolescence.
can achieve their performance through mechanisms with Most of these adaptations require that practice is main-