8.2 Expertise

Question 1

Expertise in practice

Answer 1

Expert performance requires:

• Lots of knowledge
• Pattern based memory system

Question 2

Are experts born?

Answer 2

No

But Galton says:

• Heredity and human abilities
• Idea of talent is an innate ability
• Hereditary factors determine the limit of the attainable performance for someone

VERY FIXED MINDSET

Question 3

Problems with Galton

Answer 3

Do people perform at their peak?

• Generally not.
• Adults write more slowly than they can
• Adults add numbers slowly than they can when doing their best
• Professional typers can improve from 60 to 97%

Question 4

Hunter College study

Answer 4

School for gifted (nursery to Gr 6)
Mean IQ was 157

Followup study surveyed and interviewed 200 graduates

Result:
Most are successful and fairly content with life, but there are no superstars

Question 5

Development of Talent project

Answer 5

Goal: Understand talent.

They got 120 people experts from piano, sculpture, swimming, tennis, math, and neurology and interviewed them to reconstruct a path to success

Expected to find special gifts that were encouraged and supported through instruction

Result: They found exceptional conditions rather than exceptional kids

• Kids showed no special talent at beginning
• No strong intentions of achieving high skill in domain
• Rather ordinary
• they were ENCOURAGED and SUPPORTED in their training before they were picked out
• Aptitudes, attitudes, and expectations grew in concert and were mutually confirming

SUMMARY OF LAST 2 STUDIES:

• Achievements as a child do not predict adult expertise
• Adult expertise is not necessarily preceded by early childhood achievements

SO what is an indicator?

Question 6

Power of learning

Answer 6

Examples:

• Entry time for modern marathons are just a minute shorter than fastest time in 1896 Olympics
• Modern music training is so good that a 19th century virtuoso would be bad if placed in a modern stage
• Tchaikovsky asked 2 great violinists to play, but they refused stating it was impossible to play. Today, it’s standard repertoire

What is the pattern?
There is a dramatic increase in the peak level that is achieved by experts as time passes

What has changed?
Cultural environments that facilitate these practices

Learning allows us to adapt and improve faster than we can evolve
Learning is culturally facilitated by systems, methodologies, programs, communities, etc

They ways we learn is very important

Question 7

Practice makes perfect

Answer 7

“The secret of attaining excellence is to always maintain close attention to every detail of performance”

Example: Pianists
- Experts increase their practice hours as they grow older
- Novices practices hours increase a little, but is mostly flat
- After adding hours, experts achieve 10 000 hours of practice while novices achieve around 1 500 hours by age 20
- Precision and consistency increases with time
Review graphs

Is it enough to just practice? NO
Remember what we discussed about the power of learning… They were probably training just as hard

Question 8

Deliberate practice - Importance

Answer 8

We need to use deliberate practice. It is highly structured and designed to improve performance.

• Highlight weaknesses and mistakes
• Monitor level of achievement
• Improve on what is insufficient
• Requires a lot of effort and is unpleasant, as it relies on mistakes
• People are motivated to do it because it improves their performance

How do you improve?
Practice in ways that reveal these errors.
Practice more to correct these errors

Question 9

Deliberate practice - Challenge

Answer 9

Challenging, as it does not feel good
- Difficult and demanding

Examples:

• Athlete train harder in preseason and during season, but off season they reduce levels of training dramatically
• Elite adolescents who decided to stop competing remained active in domain, but virtually stopped engaging in practice

The only reason to do this practice is to achieve expertise

Study: Musicians asked to rate importance of different activities based on different factors

Relevance of activities from Most to Least:
- Solo practice
- Taking lessons
…
- Leisure is not so important (second last)

Effort of activities from Most to Least:
- Solo performance
- Taking lessons
- Solo practice
...
- Leisure

Note practice with others is not so effortful, but not as relevant as practising on your own

Pleasure of activities from Most to Least:
- Leisure
- Playing for fun
- Sleep
...
- Solo practice (second last)