Individual differences in chess expertise: a psychometric investigation

Starting from controversies over the role of general individual characteristics (especially intelligence) for the attainment of expert performance levels, a comprehensive psychometric investigation of individual differences in chess expertise is presented. A sample of 90 adult tournament chess players of varying playing strengths (1311-2387 ELO) was screened with tests on intelligence and personality variables; in addition, experience in chess play, tournament participation, and practice activities were assessed. Correlation and regression analyses revealed a clear-cut moderate relationship between general (and in particular numerical) intelligence and the participants' playing strengths, suggesting that expert chess play does not stand in isolation from superior mental abilities. The strongest predictor of the attained expertise level, however, was the participants' chess experience which highlights the relevance of long-term engagement for the development of expertise. Among all analysed personality dimensions, only domain-specific performance motivation and emotion expression control incrementally contributed to the prediction of playing strength. In total, measures of chess experience, current tournament activity, intelligence, and personality accounted for about 55% of variance in chess expertise. The present results suggest that individual differences in chess expertise are multifaceted and cannot be reduced to differences in domain experience.     

A multilevel model analysis of expertise in chess across the life span

The authors examined longitudinal change in chess skill using a multilevel model analysis of a large database of active, elite chess players (N = 5,011). Parameters estimated from quadratic growth curves indicated that the age of peak performance occurs later in life than originally proposed and that this peak is independent of initial skill level. The findings are also consistent with the hypothesis that aging is slightly kinder to the initially more able, who show milder decline past their peak. Higher tournament activity levels predicted higher ratings overall and interacted with age in the initially more able sample, suggesting that activity had smaller effects on rating for older adults. The authors discuss implications of these findings for lifetime changes in skilled performance.     

Cognitive Reorganization and the development of chess expertise

One current research strategy in the study of expertise is to compare experts and novices. An important aspect of decision making involves looking for similarities among problem types. Little is known about such processes. We used grid technique to examine similarity judgments associated with different levels of chess expertise. Novice, expert, and master chess players evaluated 4 sets of 12 chess boards. Average FIC scores showed a curvilinear relation to expertise, suggesting increasing differentiation followed by integration in cognitive frameworks for construing board positions. Additional cognitive measures based on move generation tended to support and extend this structural model.     

Children and chess expertise: The role of calibration

Summary Three studies of calibration are reported. Calibration refers to the accuracy with which one can predict one's own performance. In the first study child chess players, non-chess playing parents, and statistics students were asked to predict chances of winning chess games against hypothetical opponents. These subjective probabilities were compared to the actual probabilities, based on the Elo rating system. Better players' predictions were better calibrated. Confidence and ratings are negatively correlated, indicating that with lower ratings, players are overconfident. Skilled child players' predictions were better calibrated than any of the adults'. In the second study subjects were asked to estimate chances of winning in conjunctive situations, e. g., winning all the rounds in a tournament. Again, better child players were more accurate in their predictions and more accurate than adults. In the third study, child players were asked to predict their chances of winning in a non-chess domain after hearing a hypothetical win/loss history. Higher-rated players' predictions were again better calibrated, even though the domain was outside their expertise. The motivational and cognitive implications of calibration are discussed.     

Effect of expertise acquisition on strategic perception: The example of chess

The two experiments presented here study perceptual processes implemented by chess players in situations related to their domain of expertise. The aim was to determine how patterns are perceived as a function of their strategic value when players acquire expertise. In this study, conducted on novice and more experienced players, it is hypothesized that with acquisition of expertise players would quickly encode familiar patterns and then rapidly focus their attention on patterns with a higher immediate strategic value. In Experiment 1, participants had to carry out a change-detection task that used the “flicker paradigm”. The results showed that during the perception of standard chess positions, experienced players—but not novices—quickly focused their attention on the most strategic patterns. In Experiment 2, experienced players and novices carried out a recognition task after having encoded chess positions for 1 or 5 s. The results indicated early encoding of familiar patterns without immediate strategic value, followed by the encoding of more strategic patterns. Taken together, the results of these two experiments are consistent with the results by both de Groot and Gobet (1996) de Groot, A. D. and Gobet, F. 1996. Perception and memory in chess. Heuristics of the professional eye, Assen, The Netherlands: Van Gorcum.  [Google Scholar] and McGregor and Howes (2002) McGregor, S. J. and Howes, A. 2002. The role of attack and defense semantics in skilled players' memory for chess positions. Memory & Cognition, 30: 707–717. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar] about the strategic content of Chase and Simon's chunks (Chase & Simon, 1973b Chase, W. G. and Simon, H. A. 1973b. Perception in chess. Cognitive Psychology, 4: 55–81. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]).     

Effect of expertise acquisition on strategic perception: the example of chess

The two experiments presented here study perceptual processes implemented by chess players in situations related to their domain of expertise. The aim was to determine how patterns are perceived as a function of their strategic value when players acquire expertise. In this study, conducted on novice and more experienced players, it is hypothesized that with acquisition of expertise players would quickly encode familiar patterns and then rapidly focus their attention on patterns with a higher immediate strategic value. In Experiment 1, participants had to carry out a change-detection task that used the "flicker paradigm". The results showed that during the perception of standard chess positions, experienced players--but not novices--quickly focused their attention on the most strategic patterns. In Experiment 2, experienced players and novices carried out a recognition task after having encoded chess positions for 1 or 5 s. The results indicated early encoding of familiar patterns without immediate strategic value, followed by the encoding of more strategic patterns. Taken together, the results of these two experiments are consistent with the results by both de Groot and Gobet (1996) and McGregor and Howes (2002) about the strategic content of Chase and Simon's chunks (Chase & Simon, 1973b).     

The role of meaning in contextual cueing: Evidence from chess expertise

In contextual cueing, the position of a search target is learned over repeated exposures to a visual display. The strength of this effect varies across stimulus types. For example, real-world scene contexts give rise to larger search benefits than contexts composed of letters or shapes. We investigated whether such differences in learning can be at least partially explained by the degree of semantic meaning associated with a context independently of the nature of the visual information available (which also varies across stimulus types). Chess boards served as the learning context as their meaningfulness depends on the observer's knowledge of the game. In Experiment 1, boards depicted actual game play, and search benefits for repeated boards were 4 times greater for experts than for novices. In Experiment 2, search benefits among experts were halved when less meaningful randomly generated boards were used. Thus, stimulus meaningfulness independently contributes to learning context–target associations.     

The role of meaning in contextual cueing: evidence from chess expertise

In contextual cueing, the position of a search target is learned over repeated exposures to a visual display. The strength of this effect varies across stimulus types. For example, real-world scene contexts give rise to larger search benefits than contexts composed of letters or shapes. We investigated whether such differences in learning can be at least partially explained by the degree of semantic meaning associated with a context independently of the nature of the visual information available (which also varies across stimulus types). Chess boards served as the learning context as their meaningfulness depends on the observer's knowledge of the game. In Experiment 1, boards depicted actual game play, and search benefits for repeated boards were 4 times greater for experts than for novices. In Experiment 2, search benefits among experts were halved when less meaningful randomly generated boards were used. Thus, stimulus meaningfulness independently contributes to learning context-target associations.     

Recall of random and distorted chess positions: Implications for the theory of expertise

This paper explores the question, important to the theory of expert performance, of the nature and number of chunks that chess experts hold in memory. It examines how memory contents determine players’ abilities to reconstruct (1) positions from games, (2) positions distorted in various ways, and (3) random positions. Comparison of a computer simulation with a human experiment supports the usual estimate that chess Masters store some 50,000 chunks in memory. The observed impairment of recall when positions are modified by mirror image reflection implies that each chunk represents a specific pattern of pieces in a specific location. A good account of the results of the experiments is given by the template theory proposed by Gobet and Simon (in press) as an extension of Chase and Simon’s (1973b) initial chunking proposal, and in agreement with other recent proposals for modification of the chunking theory (Richman, Staszewski, & Simon, 1995) as applied to various recall tasks.     

A psychometric analysis of five DSM-III categories

Preliminary studies of interdiagnostician agreement have shown that the DSM-III holds promise for improving diagnostic reliability. This study examined the characteristics of five DSM-III diagnostic categories (schizophrenia, mania and schizotypal, narcissistic and borderline personality disorders) with respect to three psychometric criteria. Examined were the specificity, syndrome association and internal consistency of the diagnostic criteria for these disorders. Results suggested that of the diagnostic categories examined, the criteria for schizophrenia performed best under empirical scrutiny, while criteria for borderline and narcissistic personality disorders were more problematic. Suggestions are made for subsequent investigations into the internal validity of DSM-III.     

A psychometric analysis of the Personal Attributes Questionnaire

The psychometric properties of the Personal Attributes Questionnaire were examined in independent samples of male and female high school students, college students, and adults. In each of the six samples a two-factor structure (masculinity/instrumentality and femininity/expressivity) paralleling the empirically derived scales was found. Additional factor analyses of negative masculine and feminine traits were reported. Discriminant analyses revealed highly significant differentiation between the sexes. The reliabilities (Cronbach alpha) of the unit-weighted scales in each sample were also satisfactory.Support for this research was provided by NASA Grant NSG 2065 (Robert L. Helmreich, Principal Investigator) and NSF Grant BNS 78-08911 (Janet T. Spence and Robert L. Helmreich, Principal Investigators). The article was prepared while the second author was a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, with support from the Spencer Foundation, NIMH Grant 5T32MH14581-03, and the University of Texas Research Institute.     

Practice other than playing games apparently has only a modest role in the development of chess expertise

Evidence that chess expertise rests on practice alone mostly comes from studies using a correlational retrospective recall paradigm, which confounds amount of study with number of games played and possible innate talent. Researchers also often use latest performance rating and include participants who play and study little. Study 1 partially replicated such studies with improvements such as use of peak rating and a large, skilled sample. Number of internationally‐rated games played was the strongest predictor of peak rating. Total study hours was a significant but weaker predictor. Study 2 controlled for sampling confounds by including only very well‐practiced players who had played at least 350 internationally‐rated games. Total study hours did not predict rating at 350 games. Study 3 found that the subjective phenomenon of reaching a performance ceiling and undertaking specific practice to get beyond it does occur but does not distinguish between stronger and weaker players. Study 4 found that many players play relatively few internationally‐rated games mostly because of other commitments, such as work and education. Extensive study may go along with great interest in and persistence at chess but apparently lacks a major causative role in chess performance level.     

Planning abilities and chess: A comparison of chess and non‐chess players on the Tower of London task

Playing chess requires problem‐solving capacities in order to search through the chess problem space in an effective manner. Chess should thus require planning abilities for calculating many moves ahead. Therefore, we asked whether chess players are better problem solvers than non‐chess players in a complex planning task. We compared planning performance between chess (N=25) and non‐chess players (N=25) using a standard psychometric planning task, the Tower of London (ToL) test. We also assessed fluid intelligence (Raven Test), as well as verbal and visuospatial working memory. As expected, chess players showed better planning performance than non‐chess players, an effect most strongly expressed in difficult problems. On the other hand, they showed longer planning and movement execution times, especially for incorrectly solved trials. No differences in fluid intelligence and verbal/visuospatial working memory were found between both groups. These findings indicate that better performance in chess players is associated with disproportionally longer solution times, although it remains to be investigated whether motivational or strategic differences account for this result.     

Application of the generalized matching law to chess openings: A gambit analysis

During the opening moves of a chess game, a player (typically White) may offer a number of gambits, which involve sacrificing a chess piece for an opponent for capture to achieve long-term positional advantages. One of the most popular gambits is called the Queen's Gambit and involves White offering a pawn to Black, which will open a lane for White's Queen if accepted by Black. In the present study, the generalized matching law (GML) was applied to chess openings involving the Queen's Gambit using over 71,000 archived chess games. Overall, chess players' opening moves involving the Queen's Gambit exhibited orderly matching as predicted by the GML, and the GML accounted for more variance in players' chess decision making as their relative playing experience increased. This study provides support for the generality of the GML and its application to complex operant behavior outside of laboratory contexts.     

A complete database of international chess players and chess performance ratings for varied longitudinal studies

Chess is an oft-used study domain in psychology and artificial intelligence because it is well defined, its performance rating systems allow easy identification of experts and their development, and chess playing is a complex intellectual task. However, usable computerized chess data have been very limited. The present article has two aims. The first is to highlight the methodological value of chess data and how researchers can use them to address questions in quite different areas. The second is to present a computerized database of all international chess players and official performance ratings beginning from the inaugural 1970 international rating list. The database has millions of records and gives complete longitudinal official performance data for over 60,000 players from 1970 to the present. Like a time series of population censuses, these data can be used for many different research and teaching purposes. Three quite different studies, conducted by the author using the database, are described.     

A simulation of memory for chess positions

This paper describes an information-processing model, MAPP, implemented as a computer program, that simulates the processes subjects use to remember and reproduce chess positions they have seen briefly. The model incorporates processes adapted from PERCEIVER, an information-processsing theory of eye movements in chess perception, and EPAM, a theory of rote verbal learning. The data from MAPP show good agreement with the performance of strong chess players in identical tasks.     

Perception in chess

This paper develops a technique for isolating and studying the perceptual structures that chess players perceive. Three chess players of varying strength — from master to novice — were confronted with two tasks: (1) A perception task, where the player reproduces a chess position in plain view, and (2) de Groot's (1965) short-term recall task, where the player reproduces a chess position after viewing it for 5 sec. The successive glances at the position in the perceptual task and long pauses in the memory task were used to segment the structures in the reconstruction protocol. The size and nature of these structures were then analyzed as a function of chess skill.