Specialization effect and its influence on memory and problem solving in expert chess players

Cognitive Science

Volumn 33, Issue 6, 2009, Pages 1117-1143

  Bilalić, Merim ^a   McLeod, Peter ^a   Gobet, Fernand ^b  

^a UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD   (United Kingdom)

^b BRUNEL UNIVERSITY   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

Chess; Expertise; Human experimentation; Memory; Pattern recognition; Problem solving; Problem solving strategies; Psychology; Reasoning; Specialization; Thinking

Indexed keywords

EID: 77953148307     PISSN: 03640213     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1551-6709.2009.01030.x     Document Type: Article

References (66)

1. Anderson, J. R. (1993). Problem solving and learning. American Psychologist, 48, 35-44.
2. Ball, L. J., Evans, J. S., Dennis, I., & Ormerod, T. C. (1997). Problem-solving strategies and expertise in engineering design. Thinking and Reasoning, 3, 247-270.
3. Bilalić, M., McLeod, P., & Gobet, F. (2008a). Why good thoughts block better ones? The mechanism of the pernicious Einstellung effect. Cognition, 108, 652-661.
4. Bilalić, M., McLeod, P., & Gobet, F. (2008b). Inflexibility of experts-reality or myth? Cognitive Psychology, 56, 73-102.
5. Bilalić, M., McLeod, P., & Gobet, F. (2008c). Expert and 'Novice' problem solving strategies in chess-sixty years of citing de Groot (1946). Thinking & Reasoning, 14, 395-408.
6. de Bono, E. (1982). de Bono's thinking course. New York: Facts on File.
7. Burns, B. D. (2004). The effects of speed on skilled chess performance. Psychological Science, 15, 442-447.
8. Campitelli, G., & Gobet, F. (2004). Adaptive expert decision making: Skilled chessplayers search more and deeper. Journal of the International Computer Games Association, 27, 209-216.
9. Chabris, C. F., & Hearst, E. S. (2003). Visualization, pattern recognition, and forward search: Effects of playing speed and sight of the position on grandmaster chess errors. Cognitive Science, 27, 637-648.
10. Charness, N. (1981). Search in chess: Age and skill differences. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 7, 467-476.
11. Charness, N. (1989). Expertise in chess and bridge. In D. Klahr & K. Kotovsky (Eds.), Complex information processing: The impact of Herbert A. Simon (pp. 183-208). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
12. Chase, W. G., & Simon, H. A. (1973). Perception in chess. Cognitive Psychology, 4, 55-81.
13. Chi, M. T. H., Glaser, R., & Farr, M. J. (1988). The nature of expertise. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
14. Clarke, V. J., & Lamberts, K. (1997). Strategy shifts and expertise in solving transformation rule problems. Thinking and Reasoning, 3, 271-290.
15. Elo, A. E. (1978). The rating of chess players, past and present. New York: Arco.
16. Elstein, A. S., Shulman, L. S., & Sprafka, S. A. (1978). Medical problem solving: An analysis of clinical reasoning. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
17. Ennis, R. H. (1991). Critical thinking: A streamlined conception. Teaching Philosophy, 14, 5-24.
18. Ennis, R. H. (1996). Critical thinking. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
19. Ericsson, K. A. (1985). Memory skill. Canadian Journal of Psychology, 39, 188-231.
20. Ericsson, K. A., & Chase, W. G. (1982). Exceptional memory. American Scientist, 70, 607-615.
21. Ericsson, K. A., & Harris, M. S. (1990, November). Expert chess memory without chess knowledge: A training study. Poster presented at the 31st Annual Meeting of the Psychonomic Society, New Orleans, LA.
22. Ericsson, K. A., & Kintsch, W. (1995). Long-term working memory. Psychological Review, 102, 211-245.
23. Ericsson, K. A., & Kintsch, W. (2000). Shortcomings of generic retrieval structures with slots of the type that Gobet (1993) proposed and modelled. British Journal of Psychology, 91, 571-590.
24. Ericsson, K. A., & Lehmann, A. C. (1996). Expert and exceptional performance: Evidence of maximal adaptation to task constraints. Annual Review of Psychology, 47, 273-305.
25. Ericsson, K. A., & Oliver, W. (1989). A methodology for assessing the detailed structure of memory skills. In A. Colley & J. Beech (Eds.), The acquisition and performance of cognitive skills (pp. 193-215). London: Wiley.
26. Ericsson, K. A., & Simon, H. A. (1993). Protocol analysis: Verbal reports as data (rev. Ed.). Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
27. Eva, K. W., Brooks, L. R., & Norman, G. R. (2002). Forward reasoning as a hallmark of expertise in medicine: Logical, psychological, phenomenological inconsistencies. In S. P. Shohov (Ed.), Advances in psychology research (Vol. 8, pp. 41-69). New York: Nova Science.
28. Gobet, F. (1997). A pattern-recognition theory of search in expert problem solving. Thinking & Reasoning, 3, 291-313.
29. Gobet, F. (1998a). Expert memory: A comparison of four theories. Cognition, 66, 115-152.
30. Gobet, F. (1998b). Chess players' thinking revisited. Swiss Journal of Psychology, 57, 18-32.
31. Gobet, F. (2005). Chunking models of expertise: Implications for education. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 19, 183-204.
32. Gobet, F. (in press). Using a cognitive architecture for addressing the question of cognitive universals in crosscultural psychology: The example of awalé. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology.
33. Gobet, F., & Jackson, S. (2002). In search of templates. Cognitive Systems Research, 3, 35-44.
34. Gobet, F., & Simon, H. A. (1996a). Templates in chess memory: A mechanism for recalling several boards. Cognitive Psychology, 31, 1-40.
35. Gobet, F., & Simon, H. A. (1996b). The roles of recognition processes and look-ahead search in timeconstrained expert problem solving: Evidence from grandmaster level chess. Psychological Science, 7, 52-55.
36. Gobet, F., & Simon, H. (1998). Expert chess memory: Revisiting the chunking hypothesis. Memory, 6, 225-255.
37. Gobet, F., & Waters, A. J. (2003). The role of constraints in expert memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory & Cognition, 29, 1082-1094.
38. de Groot, A. D. (1978). Thought and choice in chess (2nd Ed.) The Hague: Mouton Publishers (originally published 1946.)
39. de Groot, A. D., & Gobet, F. (1996). Perception and memory in chess. Studies in the heuristics of the professional eye. Assen: Van Gorcum.
40. Gruber, H. (1991). Qualitative Aspekte von Expertise im Schach. Aachen: Feenschach.
41. van Harreveld, F., Wagenmakers, E. J., & van der Maas, H. (2007). The effects of time pressure on chess skill: An investigation into fast and slow processes underlying expert performance. Psychological Research, 71, 591-597.
42. Holding, D. H. (1985). The psychology of chess skill. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
43. Holding, D. H. (1992). Theories of chess skill. Psychological Research, 54, 10-16.
44. Hunt, E. (1991). Some comments on the study of complexity. In R. J. Sternberg & P. A. Frey (Eds.), Complex problem solving (pp. 343-381). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
45. Jeffries, R., Turner, A. A., Polson, P. G., & Atwood, M. (1981). The processes involved in designing software. In J. R. Anderson (ed.), Cognitive skills and their acquisition (pp. 255-283). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
46. Joseph, G. M., & Patel, V. L. (1990). Domain knowledge and hypothesis generation in diagnostic reasoning. Medical Decision Making, 10, 31-46.
47. Kulatunga-Moruzi, C., Brooks, L. R., & Norman, G. R. (2001). Coordination of analytic and similarity-based processing strategies and expertise in dermatological diagnosis. Teaching and Learning in Medicine, 13, 110-116.
48. Larkin, J. H., McDermott, J., Simon, D. P., & Simon, H. A. (1980). Expert and novice performance in solving physics problems. Science, 208, 1335-1342.
49. Linhares, A. (2005). An active symbols theory of chess intuition. Minds and Machines, 15, 131-181.
50. Linhares, A., & Brum, P. (2007). Understanding our understanding of strategic scenarios: What role do chunks play. Cognitive Science, 31, 989-1007.
51. Newell, A. (1980). Reasoning, problem-solving and decision processes: The problem space as a fundamental category. In R. Nickerson (Ed.), Attention and performance, VIII (pp. 693-718). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
52. Newell, A., & Simon, H. A. (1972). Human problem solving. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
53. Patel, V. L., & Groen, G. J. (1986). Knowledge based solution strategies in medical reasoning. Cognitive Science, 10, 91-116.
54. Patel, V. L., & Groen, G. J. (1991). The general and specific nature of medical expertise: A critical look. In K. A. Ericsson & J. Smith (Eds.), Toward a general theory of expertise: Prospects and limits (pp. 93-125). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
55. Patel, V. L., Groen, G. J., & Arocha, J. F. (1990). Medical expertise as a function of task difficulty. Memory and Cognition, 18, 394-40.
56. Reimann, P., & Chi, M. T. (1989). Human expertise. In K. J. Gilhooly (Ed.), Human and machine problem solving (pp. 161-191). New York: Plenum Press.
57. Saariluoma, P. (1990). Apperception and restructuring in chess players pro-blem solving. In K. J. Gilhooly, M. T. G. Keane, R. H. Logie, & G. Erdos (Eds.), Lines of thought: Reflections on the psychology of thinking (Vol. II, pp. 41-57). New York: Wiley.
58. Saariluoma, P. (1992). Error in chess: The apperception-restructuring view. Psychological Research, 54, 17-26.
59. Saariluoma, P. (1995). Chess player's thinking. London: Routledge.
60. Schraagen, J. M. (1993). How experts solve a novel problem in experimental design. Cognitive Science, 17, 285-309.
61. Schunn, C. D., & Anderson, J. R. (1999). The generality/specificity of expertise in scientific reasoning. Cognitive Science, 23, 337-370.
62. Vicente, K. J., & Wang, J. H. (1998). An ecological theory of expertise effects in memory recall. Psychological Review, 105, 33-57.
63. Voss, J. F., Tyler, S. W., & Yengo, L. A. (1983). Individual differences in the solving of social science problems. In R. F. Dillon & R. R. Schmeck (Eds.), Individual differences in cognition (Vol. 1, pp. 205-232). New York: Academic.
64. Waters, A. J., & Gobet, F. (2008). Mental imagery and chunks: Empirical and computational findings. Memory & Cognition, 36, 505-517.
65. Williams, M. W., Papierno, B. P., & Makel, C. M. (2004). Thinking like a scientist about real-world problems: The Cornell Institute for Research on Children Science Education Program. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 25, 107-126.
66. Zhu, X., Lee, Y., Simon, H. A., & Zhu, D. (1996). Cue recognition and cue elaboration in learning from examples. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 93, 1346-1351.