topics: |  psychology | cognitive | learning | expertise

In the 2014 football world cup, Netherlands was trailing the world
champion, Spain, by 0-1.

Forty-three minutes into the game, with the score 0-1 against
Netherlands, the ball reached playmaker Daley Blind at the left wing
midfield. Striker Robin van Persie started running forward from the 25
yard line, in the expectation that the ball may reach him.

Blind's lofted cross went into the penalty area, just a bit ahead of him,
just as he managed to outstrip Ramos and several other pursuers.  He
could not have seen the ball until it was about to land, perhaps a good
six yards ahead.  the ball was sailing above him and goalkeeper-captain
Iker Casillas had run out to collect the ball.

Now, ideally one would have liked to control the ball, but it wasn't sure
he could get to it.  And in any case he would be mobbed.  In that split
second, van Persie launched into flight, heading the ball in a gentle arc
high above the goalkeeper and just under the bars.

this memorable goal led van Persie being christened the "flying
dutchman":



netherlands went on to stun Spain 5-1, with van Persie
scoring a second goal. 

The roots of expertise

The reason why I open a review of a book on expertise with this tale
is to highlight a particular aspect of expertise.  Expertise is about
making difficult things easy.  And it comes after thousands of hours of 
of pleasurable, but hard, work. 

This book outlines that the development of expertise in chess, physics,
medicine, dance, sport, music, etc - all involve processes that build
more and more compact representations of complex processes involving
many strands of input and the complex responses to it.

You show a grandmaster a complex chess position for about 5 seconds and
she will reconstruct the whole board.  Do this for an average good chess
player, they won't be able to do it even after double the time.  This
suggests that the grandmaster doesn't think of the board as 30-odd
pieces.  She sees some groupings or formations, technically called
"chunks" - and she has thousands of chunks memorized.  So every board is
a set of 3 or 4 chunks that can be recognized in an instant.

It's like storing phone numbers or reading.  You can't remember ten
random digits.  But if your area code is 518, and the exchange is 845,
then most of us can remember 1-518-845-2136 as a set of six chunks - 518,
845, and the four digits.  As we become better and better at a task,
e.g. reading, our subconscious - which is really the boss - learns to
cluster elements (letters) together to form chunks (syllables, words).  

Also it learns what to expect, so the choices of possible inputs becomes
narrower. 

That's hwo we cna rdea sntenecs taht hvae tberrile sllpenigs.

Expertise seems superhuman

Now to return to Robin van Persie.  His feat seems superhuman, like
that of most sports heroes.  Yet, it is quite clear that at that moment
he didn't "think". He didn't say - "hmmm - that ball is a
bit too far out.  Should I try to control it? Or could I try heading it
with a flying leap?"  There was no time to "think".  His body just "did
it".

In a lot of expert action, there is very little deliberation - it's all
automatic.  For sportsmen, it seems almost to be in the body; for
others it's in some part of the brain.  But actually these are the same
- they are all below the level of our awareness - the
subconscious. This is a hallmark of expertise.  During those 10,000+
hours of practice, the brain-body system internalizes these situations,
and clusters them into larger and larger chunks.  Our subconscious
learns millions of complex patterns and complex responses.  So when the
opportunity comes, one is ready.

Here is a .gif movie of van Persie's goal.  
 


And while on the theme of expertise, here is a movie that underlines
the point, which traces the chess development of grandmaster Susan
Polgar.  It also shows a number of other experiments including one by
Anders Ericsson: My brilliant mind - Make Me A Genius, from National
Geographic: 







This book contains
articles on expertise in many areas: 
 - chess (Neil Charness: search vs knowledge),
 - physics (Yuichiro Anzai), 
 - medicine (vimla patel / groen), 
 - dance and sport,
 - music, 
 - symbolic connectionism 

also on models of expertise, now in their third generation. 
(keith holyoak: first gen - logic / search; second gen - novice search-like
knowledge is automated as chunks or productions; third generation - to come,
may be connectionist).

Contents

Ericsson, K. Anders  and Jacqui Smith:  Prospects and limits of the empirical
	study of expertise
Charness, Neil. Expertise in chess: the balance between knowledge and search
Anzai, Yūichirō, 1946- Learning and use of representations for physics
	expertise
Patel, Vimla L. General and specific nature of medical expertise: a critical
	look
Groen, Guy J. General and specific nature of medical expertise: a critical
	look
Allard, Fran. Motor-skill experts in sports, dance, and other domains
Starkes, Janet L. Motor-skill experts in sports, dance, and other domains
Sloboda, John A. Musical expertise
Scardamalia, Marlene, 1944- Literate expertise
Bereiter, Carl. Literate expertise
Camerer, Colin F. Process-performance paradox in expert judgment: how can
	experts know so much and predict so badly?
Johnson, Eric J. Process-performance paradox in expert judgment: how can
	experts know so much and predict so badly?
Dörner, Dietrich, 1938- Controlling complex systems; or, Expertise as
	"grandmother's know-how"
Schïlkopf, Julia. Controlling complex systems; or, Expertise as
	"grandmother's know-how"
Olson, Judith Reitman. Techniques for representing expert knowledge
Salthouse, Timothy A. Expertise as the circumvention of human processing
	limitations
Holyoak, Keith James, 1950- Symbolic connectionism: toward third-generation
	theories of expertise

Send your jottings to Book Excerptise

to contribute some excerpts from your favourite book to book excerptise. send us a plain text file with page-numbered extracts from your favourite book. You can preface your extracts with a short review.
email to (bookexcerptise [at] gmail [dot] com).