Homework 2
Classically, expertise in a field was thought to be a combination of perseverance and a set of special skills. But, as Anders Ericsson points out in his article, no generalised speciality was found in the behaviour or actions of the experts, with just an exceptional performance in their field of dominance. This ability to perform extraordinarily was explained by domain-specific training for long periods and organizing the attained knowledge attained by it. It is by this gained experience that the experts attain powers to recognize, recall and tackle problems pertaining to their domain of excellence more rapidly and reliably in the eyes of general audience.
But, in the group discussion we had, we did find certain shortcomings in these explanations. It has been mentioned more than once in the article that long periods of domain specific training is a key reason for expertise. And this completely contrasts the case shown by child prodigies. We have heard their stories; some of us may even have a first-hand experience of their genius and still we find no mention of how they may have acquired their talents. Another point that thorns up is that in most experiments, world-class performers (mostly chess players) were given a problem pertaining to their domain and were asked to speak aloud their approaches and step by step mental processes they follow to solve the challenge. These approaches and processes had a lion’s share in determining the results of the experiments. But I have serious apprehensions over the reliability of these spoken explanations. As demonstrated by Malcolm Gladwell in his best-seller Blink, the actual actions of experts may not actually match to the one they perceive to perform. (Almost every professional tennis player described hitting a forehand by rolling of wrists but in actuality, wrists rolled only after hitting the ball. There was also a similar experiment with baseball players who too had a similar issue)
I personally find this very similar to nativism vs. empiricism approaches of learning with nativism being analogous to special set of skills and empiricism to the skills acquired by long periods of practice. This is thus, a very open-ended topic of debate and results of newer experiments may tilt scale in either or both sides.