Lecture 07 - Research on the Acquisition of Expert Performance

Question 1

What is expert performance?

Answer 1

consistently superior performance on specified set of representative tasks for the domain that can be administered to any subject
- par at golf (for example)

Question 2

Describe Tiger Woods’ expertise?

Answer 2

• youngest Junior amateur
• youngest amateur champion
• 3x amateur champion
• 14 major championships
• win 30% of tournaments
• lowest career scoring average
• highest career earings

Question 3

What is performance (in relation to ability and effort)?

Answer 3

peformance = ability X effort

Question 4

What is Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences?

Answer 4

linguistic-verbal (creative writers)

logical-mathematical (engineers)

spatial (architects)

musical (musicians)

bodily kinaesthetic (athletes and dancers)

interpersonal (managers, teachers)

intrapersonal (writers)

“We should spend less time ranking children and MORE TIME HELPING THEM TO IDENTIFY THEIR NATURAL COMPETENCIES AND GIFTS, AND CULTIVATE THOSE”
- example of interpersonal intelligence –> correlations among intelligences

Question 5

What is the best evidence for the talent view in relation to acquiring expertise?

Answer 5

1. Performance of prodigies
   - children who acquire expert levels of performance at a very young age
   –> environment? or future success?
2. the performance of savants
   - individuals without normal intelligence but who display very unusual abilities that other people do not have
3. Seemingly superior basic abilities that predestine one for success in a certain domain
   - e.g., absolute pitch in music, spatial memory of chess-players

Question 6

What is the evidence against basic abilities as a prerequisite?

Answer 6

Failure to find basic abilities that predict later expertise

failure to find experts with less than 10 years of training

Question 7

What is Ericsson’s and Charness’ conclusion on the talent view?

Answer 7

“even for the most successful individuals, the major domains of expertise are sufficiently complex that mastery of them requires approximately ten years of essentially full-time preparation, which corresponds to several 1000’s of hours of practice”

3000 hours for good amateur player

Question 8

What is the key to developing expertise in a domain?

Answer 8

E & C’s Controversial Theory

“the traditional view that successful individuals have special innate abilities and basic capacities is not consistent with the evidence… differences between experts and less accomplished performers instead reflect acquired knowledge and skills or physiological adaptations that result from training”

Question 9

Why did Tiger become so good?

Answer 9

early exposure, extensive training, involved parents

also, a keen interest and high self-control