Expertise Flashcards
What did John R. Hayes find through studies of geniuses?
That no one reached genius level of performance without at least 10 years of practice
What are the three phases of skill acquisition according to Fitts and Posner?
Cognitive phase
Associative phase
Autonomous phase
What happens in the cognitive phase?
Individuals focus on understanding and learning the basic rules, concepts, or procedures of a task.
They rely on explicit instruction and conscious effort
What happens in the associative phase?
Individuals refine their skills through practice, reducing errors and improving efficiency.
They start to recognize patterns and make fewer mistakes
What happens in the autonomous phase?
Skills become automatic and require little conscious effort
What is declarative encoding?
The conscious process of storing facts, events, or knowledge in memory for later explicit recall
(relate to the cognitive phase)
What is knowledge in a declarative form?
Facts and information that can be explicitly stated or described, such as “Paris is the capital of France” or recalling a personal experience (slow retrieval)
What is knowledge in a procedural form
Involves knowing how to perform tasks or actions, such as riding a bike or typing on a keyboard, often without being able to explicitly explain it (fast retrieval)
What is the power law of learning?
States that as people practice a skill, their performance improves rapidly at first and then more slowly over time
What brain areas are involved in expertise?
As learning progresses there is increased activity in the basal ganglia and decreased activation in the hippocampus.
Basal ganglia: associated with procedural knowledge
Hippocampus: associated with declarative knowledge
Motor region and Cerebellum: Involved in programming the actual motor movements and fine tuning (activation does not change much after practice)
Parietal region: Spatial awareness and visual-motor integration, (activation change much after practice)
Prefrontal region: Retrieves relevant information, like task instructions or rules, and manages working memory for goal-directed behavior (early learning phase) (activation change much after practice)
Anterior cingulate cortex (ACC): Manages cognitive control, like focus and conflict detection (activation does not change much after practice)
Fusiform gyrus: recognizing patterns
What is proceduralization?
Converting declarative knowledge (facts and rules) into procedural knowledge (how-to skills) through practice.
As individuals practice, actions become more automatic
What is tactical learning?
Specific and immediate tasks, achieving specific goals through practice and experience.
(Pattern learning is a part of tactical learning)
What is strategic learning?
Developing long-term plans and making decisions to achieve broader goals
Understanding when, why, and how to apply knowledge
What does a shift from superficial to deep processing of perceptual features mean?
To become an expert you start focusing on underlying principles and patterns rather than just surface details
What is superior expert memory?
The ability of experts to remember and recall relevant information more effectively due to extensive practice and deep understanding
What is the role of long-term memory in expertise?
As people become more expert in a domain, they develop a better ability to store problem information in long-term memory and to retrieve it
What is deliberate practice?
Focused, goal-oriented practic to improve skills, involving challenging tasks, constant feedback, and repetition, with the intention of gradually mastering skills
What is “Doctrine of formal discipline”?
Mental abilities can be strengthened through the practice of certain tasks, like learning subjects such as mathematics, which are believed to train the mind and improve general cognitive abilities.
“The mind can be trained like a muscle”
Describe dual n-back task vs. single n-back task
The dual n-back task involves remembering and matching two types of information (e.g., visual and auditory stimuli) at the same time
Single n-back task focuses on one type of information (e.g., just visual or just auditory)
What is Edward Thorndike’s theory of identical elements? (behaviourism)
It suggests that transfer of learning occurs when there are similar elements between the learned task and the new task. The more elements they share, the easier it is to apply skills from one to the other
What is Singley and Anderson’s theory of automatization?
It suggests that with practice, individuals rely on stored instances of past experiences to perform tasks automatically
(An expert in one domain will have little positive benefit on becoming an expert in a very different domain)
What is negative transfer and positive transer?
Negative transfer: when past learning hinders performance on new tasks
(ex. the Einstellung effect)
Positive transfer: when past learning helps with new tasks
(ex. learning to play the piano can help with learning other keyboard instruments)
What is componential analysis?
Approaches to instruction that begin with an analysis of the individual elements that need to be learned
What is mastery learning?
An approach where students learn a topic until they fully understand it, before moving on to the next one
What is intelligent tutoring system?
A computer program that helps students learn by providing personalized instruction and feedback, similar to a human tutor. It adapts to each student’s needs
What is Ravens progressive matrices test?
A test where you solve visual puzzles by finding patterns. It measures how well you can think and reason without relying on specific knowledge
Describe novices vs. experts
Novices are beginners who have limited knowledge and experience in a specific area, while experts have extensive knowledge and experience
Explain the difference between expert and non-expert problem solving
Experts solve problems quickly because they know a lot about the topic and recognize patterns.
Non-experts take longer because they don’t have as much knowledge and may need to try different ways to figure things out
What is backward reasoning vs forward reasoning?
Novices use backward reasoning: solve problems by starting with what they don’t know and working backward to find the solution.
Experts use forward reasoning: begin with known facts or formulas and move forward to solve the problem
What did Neves and Anderson find about geometry problems?
Time to prove a geometry problem was measured over time with practice:
Results show, that as the number of problems practiced, the time to solve the problems declined according to a power law
What is the power law of learning a skill that has been abandoned?
When people return to a skill once learned, they quickly re-learn the skill - also according to a power law
What did Kolers find about reading time?
Reading time is faster for words that are familiar or previously encountered, showing that repeated exposure improves reading efficiency
What did Qin et al. find?
As people become more proficient at a task, they seem to use less of their brains to perform that task
What did Larkin find about differences in novice and expert problem-solving approaches?
Found that experts solve problems more efficiently than novices by using specialized knowledge and organized strategies (pattern recognizion)
What did Crossman find about cigar making?
Cigar making ability of a worker can be described as a power function, where the time of the cigar making decreases as a variable of time
What did Priest and Lindsay find about novices vs. experts?
Both rely on forward reasoning, but experts outperform
What did Lesgold et al. find about medical students?
Novices medical students rely on textbook knowledge and rules, while more advanced students start recognizing patterns in patient cases and use more efficient, experience-based strategies
What is problem perception?
Refers to the way individuals interpret and understand a problem
What did De Groot and Chase & Simon find about chess players?
When shown a chess position for 5 seconds, masters can recall over 20 pieces, while weaker players manage 4-5 pieces and when presented with uncommon chessboard positions, both masters and weaker players perform similarly
How can Expertise relate to other topics?
