Analogical transfer and expertise in legal reasoning

Analogical transfer and its relation to expertise is examined in a legal context. Three experiments were conducted comparing the performance of novices (introductory tax students) and of experts (experienced tax practitioners from multinational public accounting firms) on tasks involving the application of tax laws. In Experiment 1 subjects completed a target problem after reading a decided case that was either analogous or not analogous to a target problem. A limited amount of transfer was observed, with no differential rate of transfer across experience levels. In Experiments 2 and 3 attempts were made to facilitate transfer of knowledge by inducing transfer-appropriate processing of the source analog and by providing multiple source analogs. The results of both experiments indicate an interaction between treatment and expertise. Unexpectedly, the facilitating treatments reduced the transfer of knowledge for experts while increasing the transfer for novices. Subsequent analysis of the responses of the expert subjects indicates that for the more experienced expert subjects a highly proceduralized rule interfered with the knowledge transfer when that rule was made salient by the facilitating treatments. The less experienced expert subjects behaved in a manner consistent with the hypotheses. This poor performance of the more experienced experts results from the inflexibility in expert problem solving due to the proceduralization of information processing. Frensch and Sternberg (1989) demonstrate that this type of inflexibility is one of the costs of expertise and results from the development of a large and highly complex knowledge base containing numerous well developed strategies.     

The world of competitive Scrabble: Novice and expert differences in visuopatial and verbal abilities

Competitive Scrabble players spend a mean of 4.5 hr a week memorizing words from the official Scrabble dictionary. When asked if they learn word meanings when studying word lists, only 6.4% replied "always," with the rest split between "sometimes" and "rarely or never." Number of years of play correlated positively with expertise ratings, suggesting that expertise develops with practice. To determine the effect of hours of practice (M = 1,904), the authors compared experts with high-achieving college students on a battery of cognitive tests. Despite reporting that they usually memorize word lists without learning meanings, experts defined more words correctly. Reaction times on a lexical decision task (controlling for age) correlated with expertise ratings, suggesting that experts develop faster access to word identification. Experts' superiority on visuospatial processing was found for reaction time on 1 of 3 visuospatial tests. In a study of memory for altered Scrabble boards, experts outperformed novices, with differences between high and low expertise on memory for boards with structure-deforming transformations. Expert Scrabble players showed superior performance on selected verbal and visuospatial tasks that correspond to abilities that are implicated in competitive play.     

Attending to the execution of a complex sensorimotor skill: expertise differences, choking, and slumps

A simulated baseball batting task was used to compare the relative effects of attending to extraneous information (tone frequency) and attending to skill execution (direction of bat movement) on performance and swing kinematics and to evaluate how these effects differ as a function of expertise. The extraneous dual task degraded batting performance in novices but had no significant effect on experts. The skill-focused dual task increased batting errors and movement variability for experts but had no significant effect on novices. For expert batters, accuracy in the skill-focused dual task was inversely related to the current level of performance. Expert batters were significantly more accurate in the skill-focused dual task when placed under pressure. These findings indicate that the attentional focus varies substantially across and within performers with different levels of expertise.     

Influence of Domain Knowledge on Monitoring Performance Across the Life Span

Two studies were conducted to investigate effects of domain knowledge on metacognitive monitoring across the life span in materials of different complexity. Participants from 4 age groups (3rd-grade children, adolescents, younger and older adults) were compared using an expert–novice paradigm. In Study 1, soccer experts’ and novices’ ease-of-learning judgments (EOLs), judgments of learning (JOLs), and confidence judgments (CJs) were contrasted when memorizing soccer-related word pairs. In Study 2, monitoring judgments (i.e., a rating of global comprehension, JOLs, and CJs) were collected in regards to a soccer-related narrative. The results of both approaches showed that experts’ better memory performance obtained in both studies was not always accompanied by advantages in monitoring performance. In Study 1, experts of all ages outperformed novices in monitoring accuracy. In Study 2, no benefits of expertise on monitoring were found; in children, novices even surpassed experts in monitoring quality. In both studies, the most consistent influence of previous domain knowledge on monitoring performance concerned more optimistic judgments of experts compared with novices, regardless of stimuli and recall format. In sum, our results document a twofold effect of expertise on monitoring. Although domain-specific knowledge enhances monitoring performance in some situations, more optimistic estimates, presumably due to the application of a familiarity heuristic, typically reduce experts’ monitoring accuracy.     

Chronometric comparisons of imagery to action: visualizing versus physically performing springboard dives

Motor imagery research emphasizes similarities between the mental imagery of an action and its physical execution. In this study, temporal differences between motor imagery and its physical performance as a function of performer expertise, skill complexity, and spatial ability were investigated. Physical execution times for springboard dives were compared with visualized execution times. Results indicate that physical and visualized performance times were not identical: Their relation is a function of dive complexity and diver expertise, but not their interaction. Relative to physical time, visualization time increased with increased complexity, suggesting the involvement of capacity-limited working memory. A nonmonotonic relation was found for expertise: Unlike experts or novices, visualization time for intermediates was significantly slower than physical time. These temporal differences are most consistent with schematic differences in skill representation. Intermediates may be relatively slowed by greater amounts of nonautomatized knowledge, as compared with the automatized knowledge of experts or the sparse knowledge of novices.     

Predicting Soccer Matches After Unconscious and Conscious Thought as a Function of Expertise

ABSTRACT— In two experiments, we investigated the effects of expertise and mode of thought on the accuracy of people's predictions. Both experts and nonexperts predicted the results of soccer matches after conscious thought, after unconscious thought, or immediately. In Experiment 1, experts who thought unconsciously outperformed participants in all other conditions. Whereas unconscious thinkers showed a correlation between expertise and accuracy of prediction, no such relation was observed for conscious thinkers or for immediate decision makers. In Experiment 2, this general pattern was replicated. In addition, experts who thought unconsciously were better at applying diagnostic information than experts who thought consciously or who decided immediately. The results are consistent with unconscious-thought theory.     

Memory recall in a process control system: a measure of expertise and display effectiveness

Previous research has shown that memory-recall performance is correlated with domain expertise. In this study, a process control system was selected as a vehicle for conducting research on memory recall. The primary purposes of the present work were to determine if the classic expertise effects originally obtained in chess generalize to this novel domain and to evaluate the validity of memory recall as a measure of display effectiveness. Experts and novices viewed dynamic event sequences showing the behavior of a thermal-hydraulic system with two different displays, one that only contained information about the physical components in the system (P) and another that also contained information about higher order functional variables (P+F). There were three types of trials: normal, where the system was operating correctly; fault, where a single fault was introduced; and random, where the system's behavior did not obey physical laws. On each trial, subjects were asked to recall the final state of the system and to diagnose the system state. The P+F display resulted in superior diagnosis performance compared with the P display. With regard to memory, there was some evidence of an interaction between trial type and expertise, with experts outperforming novices but primarily on meaningful trials. In addition, memory for the subset of variables most critical to diagnosis was better with the P+F display than with the P display, thereby indicating that memory recall can be a sensitive measure of display effectiveness. The results also clarify a theoretical problem that has existed for some time in the literature, namely, the conditions under which expertise advantages are to be expected in memory-recall tasks. Collectively, these findings point to the potential benefits of adopting an applied context as a test bed for basic research issues.     

The influence of degree of expertise and objective task complexity on perceived task complexity and performance

Research on expertise has shown that nonexperts may sometimes outperform experts. Some researchers have suggested that superior performance by experts depends on the match between the experts' cognition and the demands of the task. The authors explored this issue using a quasi-experiment set in an organization. They examined how 3 sets of similar tasks that differ in their type of complexity can lead to differences in task perceptions and performance among experts, intermediates, and novices. The results suggest that experts and novices pay attention to different aspects of a task and that this affects both their perceptions of task complexity (i.e., task analyzability and variability) and their performance on the task.     

Accuracy, error, and bias in predictions for real versus hypothetical events

Participants made predictions about performance on tasks that they did or did not expect to complete. In three experiments, participants in task-unexpected conditions were unrealistically optimistic: They overestimated how well they would perform, often by a large margin, and their predictions were not correlated with their performance. By contrast, participants assigned to task-expected conditions made predictions that were not only less optimistic but strikingly accurate. Consistent with predictions from construal level theory, data from a fourth experiment suggest that it is the uncertainty associated with hypothetical tasks, and not a lack of cognitive processing, that frees people to make optimistic prediction errors. Unrealistic optimism, when it occurs, may be truly unrealistic; however, it may be less ubiquitous than has been previously suggested.     

A neural basis for expert object recognition

Although most adults are considered to be experts in the identification of faces, fewer people specialize in the recognition of other objects, such as birds and dogs. In this research, the neurophysiological processes associated with expert bird and dog recognition were investigated using event-related potentials. An enhanced early negative component (N170, 164 ms) was found when bird and dog experts categorized objects in their domain of expertise relative to when they categorized objects outside their domain of expertise. This finding indicates that objects from well-learned categories are neurologically differentiated from objects from lesser-known categories at a relatively early stage of visual processing.     

Expertise and error in diagnostic reasoning

An investigation is presented in which a computer simulation model (DIAGNOSER) is used to develop and test predictions for behavior of subjects in a task of medical diagnosis. The first experiment employed a process-tracing methodology in order to compare hypothesis generation and evaluation behavior of DIAGNOSER with individuals at different levels of expertise (students, trainees, experts). A second experiment performed with only DIAGNOSER identified conditions under which errors in reasoning in the first experiment could be related to interpretation of specific data items. Predictions derived from DIAGNOSER's performance were tested in a third experiment with a new sample of subjects. Data from the three experiments indicated that (1) form of diagnostic reasoning was similar for all subjects trained in medicine and for the simulation model, (2) substance of diagnostic reasoning employed by the simulation model was parable with that of the more expert subjects, and (3) errors in subjects' reasoning were attributable to deficiencies in disease knowledge and the interpretation of specific patient data cues predicted by the simulation model.     

Normative and Substantive Expertise in Multiple Hypotheses Evaluation

We distinguish two criteria for evaluating the judgments of trained professionals. One criterion is conformance with a theoretical model and the other is conformance with known external criteria. Further, we label judgments that depart from a theoretical model as errors and those that depart from known external criteria as mistakes. Following this distinction, we hypothesize that auditors′ multiple hypotheses judgments will be characterized by errors but not mistakes. This hypothesis was tested by asking professional auditors to evaluate multiple hypotheses. The results confirm our expectations. Auditors′ judgments reflected ecological base rate information, and they appropriately ignored nondiagnostic evidence. Moreover, auditors did not exhibit a perseverance bias and 84% of them identified the correct hypothesis. The absence of mistakes reflect substantive expertise. Conversely, auditors′ probabilities were not additive, and, when a hypothesis was eliminated, they did not adjust beliefs for the remaining hypotheses. These errors reflect a lack of normative expertise. A second study employed inexperienced subjects to establish whether the strong substantive performance of the professional auditors was attributed to their expertise or was an artifact of the task. The results from the second study were strongly supportive of the substantive expertise explanation. Taken together, these results suggest that substantive expertise can help contain mistakes but it is not sufficient to mitigate errors. Further, lack of normative expertise can lead to errors but these errors do not translate into mistakes. The paper concludes that the distinction between normative and substantive expertise on one hand and errors and mistakes on the other is crucial to understanding when basic findings will generalize to professional settings.     

On the origin of intermediate effects in clinical case recall

In two experiments, the effects of level of medical expertise and study time on free recall of a clinical case were assessed. In Experiment 1, a nonmonotonic relationship between level of expertise and recall was found: Subjects of intermediate levels of expertise remembered more information from the case than both experts and novices. This “intermediate effect” disappeared, however,when study time was restricted. Analysis of post hoc acquired protocols of pathophysiological knowledge active during case processing suggested that this phenomenon could be attributed to the nature of the pathophysiological knowledge mobilized to comprehend the case. In Experiment 2, this assumption was directly tested by priming relevant pathophysiological knowledge for either a short or a longer period, before enabling subjects to study the case briefly. Free-recall data confirmed and extended the results of Experiment 1. Again, an intermediate effect was found; this time, however, it was generated experimentally. The findings were interpreted in terms of qualitative differences in the nature of the knowledge structures underlying performance between novices, advanced students, and medical experts: Experts use knowledge in an encapsulated mode while comprehending a case, whereas students use elaborated knowledge.     

Skill in map reading and memory for maps

Studies of expertise have typically shown that experts have better memory for materials from their fields than do novices. However, previous research on memory for maps has not shown the expected effect of expertise. The present study differed from previous studies by using contour maps as well as planimetric maps. In Experiment 1 the expected superiority in memory performance was found for skilled map readers when contour maps were used, but not when planimetric maps were used.

In Experiment 2, the main results of Experiment 1 were replicated, and, in addition, process tracing data were obtained during both study and test phases of contour map learning. Objective measures of attentional and retrieval focussing revealed almost no differences between the skilled and unskilled subjects. However, analyses of verbal protocols showed that the skilled subjects made more use of specialist schemata, whereas the unskilled subjects spent more time in reading place names. During recall, the skilled subjects made more use of both specialist and “lay” schemata, whereas the unskilled retrieved more place-name information.

The results are interpreted in terms of a schema-based approach to expertise.     

The vision in “blind” justice: Expert perception,judgment, and visual cognition in forensic pattern recognition

Many forensic disciplines require experts to judge whether two complex patterns are sufficiently similar to conclude that both originate from the same source. Studies in this area have revealed that there are a number of factors that affect perception and judgment and that decisions are subjective and susceptible to extraneous influences (such as emotional context, expectation, and motivation). Some studies have shown that the same expert examiner, examining the same prints but within different contexts, may reach different and contradictory decisions. However, such effects are not always present; some examiners seem more susceptible to such influences than do others—especially when the pattern matching is “hard to call” and when the forensic experts are not aware that they are being observed in an experimental study. Studying forensic examiners can contribute to our understanding of expertise and decision making, as well as have implications for forensic science and other areas of expertise.     

Expertise effects in the Moses illusion: detecting contradictions with stored knowledge

People frequently miss contradictions with stored knowledge; for example, readers often fail to notice any problem with a reference to the Atlantic as the largest ocean. Critically, such effects occur even though participants later demonstrate knowing the Pacific is the largest ocean (the Moses Illusion) [Erickson, T. D., &; Mattson, M. E. (1981). From words to meaning: A semantic illusion. Journal of Verbal Learning &; Verbal Behavior, 20, 540–551]. We investigated whether such oversights disappear when erroneous references contradict information in one's expert domain, material which likely has been encountered many times and is particularly well-known. Biology and history graduate students monitored for errors while answering biology and history questions containing erroneous presuppositions (“In what US state were the forty-niners searching for oil?”). Expertise helped: participants were less susceptible to the illusion and less likely to later reproduce errors in their expert domain. However, expertise did not eliminate the illusion, even when errors were bolded and underlined, meaning that it was unlikely that people simply skipped over errors. The results support claims that people often use heuristics to judge truth, as opposed to directly retrieving information from memory, likely because such heuristics are adaptive and often lead to the correct answer. Even experts sometimes use such shortcuts, suggesting that overlearned and accessible knowledge does not guarantee retrieval of that information.     

Expertise in cognitive psychology: testing the hypothesis of long-term working memory in a study of soccer players

This experiment compared several theories of expertise and exceptional performances in cognitive psychology. One current conception assumes that experts in a specific domain have developed a long-term working memory, which accounts for the difference in memory performance between experts and novices. The principal characteristics of this memory are the speed with which processes of storage and retrieval function and the existence of retrieval structures that allow a temporary activation of the knowledge store in long-term memory. Other authors such as Vicente and Wang argue this notion does not account for memory performance that is not intrinsic to the domain of expertise. We attempt to clarify the two viewpoints and to focus on this debate by testing the hypothesis of long-term working memory using soccer as the domain of expertise and by comparing the cognitive performance of participants who have different expertise (novices, supporters, players, and coaches). 35 male participants were administered a new version of the Reading Span test to assess their long-term working memory according to two conditions. In the first condition (structured condition), the last word of each sentence was related to the soccer domain, and these words were related to each other in such a manner that they represented a part of the game. In the second condition (unstructured condition), the last word of each sentence was related to soccer but these words did not represent part of the game. Analysis showed that the sentence span increased as a function of expertise for the structured condition but not for the unstructured condition. The results were interpreted in the framework of the constraint attunement hypothesis proposed by Vicente in 1992 and the long-term working memory hypothesis proposed by Ericsson and Kintsch in 1995.     

The role of lexical expertise in reading homophones

In Experiment 1, university students classified on lexical expertise on the basis of spelling plus nonword pronunciation accuracy made lexical decisions to homophones and control words. Homophones were accepted as words more slowly than control words, but lexical experts showed a smaller homophone cost than the less skilled group. In Experiment 2, similarly classified groups showed a large difference in their ability to detect homophones, with the low-expertise group showing a yes bias to high-frequency words, and having difficulty detecting homophones when mate-frequency was low. The results suggest superior use of orthography in the lexical experts and more reliance on semantic information in nonexperts, and support the importance of facility with orthography–phonology mappings in lexical expertise.