What's Possible? What Matters? Reply to Commentaries

The three discussants agree that a definition of psychoanalysis tied to session frequency is problematic and needs to change. Yet none supports my recommendation to redefine the practice of psychoanalysis in terms of the practitioner's training. This prompted me to look more closely at my proposal and push my thinking further. I argue that psychoanalysis, like many other professions, needs to define its practice as the application of its complex and evolving knowledge and skill base, grounded in its unique field of inquiry. Although there are individual exceptions, the inculcation of this knowledge and skill base is generally best accomplished through psychoanalytic training. This assertion, however, rests on the premise that our training curricula keep pace with our rapidly evolving field of inquiry and knowledge. To further clarify my vision I examine the nature of psychoanalytic expertise. I suggest that such expertise amounts to the inculcation and integration of a large number of psychoanalytic frames of reference. I contend further that the nature of contemporary psychoanalytic theories is such that important psychoanalytic frames of reference are proliferating more rapidly than in the past, that the relationships among them are becoming more complex, and that consequently the application of psychoanalytic theory to practice is also becoming more complex. Psychoanalytic training programs need to recognize this expanding complexity and revise curricula and pedagogic methods on an ongoing basis to reflect this evolution within our field.     

Epistemic dependence in interdisciplinary groups

In interdisciplinary research scientists have to share and integrate knowledge between people and across disciplinary boundaries. An important issue for philosophy of science is to understand how scientists who work in these kinds of environments exchange knowledge and develop new concepts and theories across diverging fields. There is a substantial literature within social epistemology that discusses the social aspects of scientific knowledge, but so far few attempts have been made to apply these resources to the analysis of interdisciplinary science. Further, much of the existing work either ignores the issue of differences in background knowledge, or it focuses explicitly on conflicting background knowledge. In this paper we provide an analysis of the interplay between epistemic dependence between individual experts with different areas of expertise. We analyze the cooperative activity they engage in when participating in interdisciplinary research in a group, and we compare our findings with those of other studies in interdisciplinary research.     

Understanding deliberate practice in preschool-aged children

Deliberate practice is essential for skill acquisition and expertise and may be a direct consequence of episodic foresight. However, little is known about how deliberate practice develops in children. We present two experiments testing children's ability to selectively practise a behaviour that was going to be useful in future and to reason about the role of practice in skill formation. Five-year-olds demonstrated an explicit understanding of deliberate practice both in selectively choosing to practise a future-relevant skill and in predicting skill change in others based on their practice. Four-year-olds showed some capacities, but failed to demonstrate consistent understanding of the relationship between practice and skill improvement. Children's understanding of this relationship was significantly related to their understanding of how information leads to knowledge, suggesting that both may draw on similar cognitive developmental changes.     

Specific and general transfer of perceptual-motor skills and learning between sports: A systematic review

ObjectivesSport developmental models contend that participating in different sports promotes expertise development, implying positive skill transfer between sports. This study conceptualizes and examines how specific and general transfer occur and interact between sports in the short- (skill transfer) and long-term (learning transfer). Specific transfer is predicated on the perception and utilisation of specifying information in a transfer task, while general transfer relies on non-specifying, "general" information. Furthermore, the study examined how certain conditions (affordance similarity, perceptual-motor exploration and expertise) promote the transfer process.DesignSystematic literature review.MethodsAn electronic search was performed on SPORTDiscuss, Pubmed/MEDLINE, and Scopus. Studies were included if participants performed a transfer task in a sport different to the sport they learned a skill in.ResultsA total of 17 studies of low-to-moderate quality were included. Most studies showed specificity of transfer between sports with overlapping affordances and generality of transfer between sports with no overlapping affordances (for a given skill). Only 2 studies examined how perceptual-motor exploration supported specific transfer, and 2 examined transfer for (subsequent) learning with contrasting results. Six studies indicated an expertise effect, showing higher transfer in skilled vs less-skilled athletes.ConclusionsThis review provides a conceptualization of specificity and generality of transfer, and initial evidence on how transfer emerges between sports in the short-term. It provides little information on the general-specific interaction in the short-term, and does not provide any insights on how transfer emerges in mid- and long-term. As such, no inference regarding sport developmental models can be made. The low-to-moderate quality of the studies requires caution in interpreting these findings. We encourage future research to investigate general and specific transfer longitudinally, recruiting populations with different expertise levels to further advance our current understanding.     

The Role of Notation and Knowledge Representation in the Determination of Programming Strategy: A Framework for Integrating Models of Programming Behavior

A number of accounts of expert programming behavior have been advanced. These models of the programming activity have served to highlight the range of factors that are thought to underpin programming strategy. However, such accounts have tended to emphasize either the effects of the organization of the programmer's knowledge representation or the role played by features of the notation of the task language on the emergence, development, and support of particular forms of strategy. Such work has neglected to (a) provide an account of the way in which these factors might interact to determine programming strategy, and (b) shed light upon the nature of the development of particular strategies as programming skill increases. This article presents the results of an empirical analysis of the strategies employed by programmers of varying skill levels using different programming languages. The development of particular forms of strategy is hypothesized to be related both to the development of systematic asymmetries in programmers' generic plan-based representations of programming knowledge and to the way in which features of the notation of particular programming languages might differentially support particular strategies. However, the results of the study reported here suggest that these effects must be interpreted within a broad developmental context. Hence, as programming skill develops, it appears that the notation of the task language tends to take precedence as a determinant of strategy, but has less relevance at beginning stages of skill development and within the context of expert performance. This finding would not be predicted by current models of the programming activity because such models suggest that any notational effects will tend to be consistent regardless of the skill level attained by the programmer. This article endeavors to extend current models of programming by emphasizing the need to consider in detail not only the development of programming strategy, but also the way in which knowledge representation and features of the task langauge interact to give rise to particular forms of programming behavior.     

Educational Intervention and the Development of Young Art Students' Talent and Creativity

This study focuses on behavior associated with young art students' developing artistic talent (skills and art‐making behavior) and creativity (personal expressions of visual information). The study examines the role of personal expertise in a student's development of problem finding, domain‐specific technical skill, perseverance, evaluation, and creative ideation. The study compares 30 experienced art students' artistic processing and products with those of 29 novice art students. Both groups are 7‐ through 11‐year‐olds. The author recorded participants' behavior as they created drawings in two contexts — from imagination and from life — and three adult artists then assessed the technical skill and creativity revealed in the drawings. Multivariate analyses of the variables associated with the drawing products and processes offer evidence of the changes related to the students' developing expertise in both novice and experienced groups. This study finds that the drawing situation (life or imagination) interacts clearly with the relationships among hypothesized components of creativity, gender, and predictors of expertise. Technical skill, perseverance, modifications, and creativity in drawings from life were significant predictors of expertise. Modifications, efficient problem finding, and creativity in drawings from imagination were additional significant predictors of expertise. Gender was found to be a measurable factor in both the artistic process and the assessments of drawings from imagination. The findings are discussed within the context of three conceptions: artistic talent, developing creativity, and art education.     

But I can’t pass that far! The influence of motor skill on decision making

Objectives

The influence of motor skill on perceptual-cognitive and perceptual-motor decision making has been theorised but not verified empirically.

Method

Expert (n = 19), developmental (n = 20), and lesser-skilled netballers (n = 19) completed tests designed to evaluate three different components of domain-specific expertise: (i) motor skill-execution; (ii) perceptual-cognitive decision making; and (iii) perceptual-motor decision making.

Results

Each of the three measures was found to improve commensurate with domain-specific skill. Decisions requiring movements (perceptual-motor) elicited more accurate decision making than simple verbal responses (perceptual-cognitive), irrespective of participant skill. Although motor skill was found to be related to the successful execution of a most appropriate movement in a game situation, it was not found to limit the nature of the decision made by participants. No evidence was found to support the supposition that lesser-skilled participants bias their perceptual-cognitive decisions towards ones supported by their motor ability.

Conclusions

Results fail to comprehensively support the contemporary models for the development of perceptual-cognitive and perceptual-motor skill in sport.     

The two landscapes of northern Norway

Our concepts of the world come from our common activities in the world. Without coastal fishing, or seafaring, in boats too large for their crews to draw them ashore, there is no place for the concept of a harbour. And without reindeer herding, there will be no concept of JASSA. That is one point. The other is this: without some of the coastal fisherman's skill and local knowledge, you will not be able to recognize a natural harbour when you see one. And without the reindeer herder's skill, you will not be able to recognize a JASSA when you see one. To put it all rather bluntly. Though there is more of both work and experience behind the first part of this article, about the world of coastal fishing, most of my academic friends have found the latter part, about the concept JASSA, the better and more readable. Can it be that the better teacher is the one who has just learnt the lesson himself?     

Knowledge structures of expert-novice gymnasts

Differences in eye movements, problem solving, and verbalization were found for three groups of female gymnasts (N=30) differentiated by skill level (elite, intermediate, novice). In the first study, eye fixations to body parts were recorded during slide presentations of six gymnastic sequences. In a second study, time and error scores were recorded in a problem solving task requiring the resequencing of photographs derived from the sequences used in the eye movement study. In the third study, verbal reports identified the photograph in each sequence and body part thought most important to a successful performance. Consistent differences between groups were recorded in fixations to body parts, time and error scores, and verbal reports; relationships between eye movement and time and error scores, and eye movements and verbal reports were also determined. All three studies supported the general hypotheses that gymnasts with different skill levels are attuned to different type of gymnastic information. These differences are discussed within the context of a knowledge structure of gymnastics, which is defined as an internal representation for a physical skill that is developed in concert with the gymnast's motor system. It is suggested that gymnasts, depending upon skill level, are drawn to perceive certain types of gymnastic information while being oblivious to other equally available types of information. Attunement to gymnastic information appears to be linked up to physical skill level in ways not yet understood.     

Prediction of toddlers’ expressive language from maternal sensitivity and toddlers’ anger expressions: A developmental perspective

Despite evidence for the importance of individual differences in expressive language during toddlerhood in predicting later literacy skills, few researchers have examined individual and contextual factors related to language abilities across the toddler years. Furthermore, a gap remains in the literature about the extent to which the relations of negative emotions and parenting to language skills may differ for girls and boys. The purpose of this longitudinal study was to investigate the associations among maternal sensitivity, children's observed anger reactivity, and expressive language when children were 18 (T1; n = 247) and 30 (T2; n = 216) months. At each age, mothers reported on their toddlers’ expressive language, and mothers’ sensitive parenting behavior was observed during an unstructured free-play task. Toddlers’ anger expressions were observed during an emotion-eliciting task. Using path modeling, results showed few relations at T1. At T2, maternal sensitivity was negatively related to anger, and in turn, anger was associated with lower language skills. However, moderation analyses showed that these findings were significant for boys but not for girls. In addition, T1 maternal sensitivity and anger positively predicted expressive language longitudinally for both sexes. Findings suggest that the relations between maternal sensitivity, anger reactivity and expressive language may vary depending on the child's developmental stage and sex.     

No frills: Simple regularities in language can go a long way in the development of word knowledge

Recent years have seen a flourishing of Natural Language Processing models that can mimic many aspects of human language fluency. These models harness a simple, decades-old idea: It is possible to learn a lot about word meanings just from exposure to language, because words similar in meaning are used in language in similar ways. The successes of these models raise the intriguing possibility that exposure to word use in language also shapes the word knowledge that children amass during development. However, this possibility is strongly challenged by the fact that models use language input and learning mechanisms that may be unavailable to children. Across three studies, we found that unrealistically complex input and learning mechanisms are unnecessary. Instead, simple regularities of word use in children's language input that they have the capacity to learn can foster knowledge about word meanings. Thus, exposure to language may play a simple but powerful role in children's growing word knowledge. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at https://youtu.be/dT83dmMffnM .

Research Highlights

• Natural Language Processing (NLP) models can learn that words are similar in meaning from higher-order statistical regularities of word use.
• Unlike NLP models, infants and children may primarily learn only simple co-occurrences between words.
• We show that infants' and children's language input is rich in simple co-occurrence that can support learning similarities in meaning between words.
• We find that simple co-occurrences can explain infants' and children's knowledge that words are similar in meaning.

     

Moral Expertise and the Credentials Problem

Philosophers have harbored doubts about the possibility of moral expertise since Plato. I argue that irrespective of whether moral experts exist, identifying who those experts are is insurmountable because of the credentials problem: Moral experts have no need to seek out others’ moral expertise, but moral non-experts lack sufficient knowledge to determine whether the advice provided by a putative moral expert in response to complex moral situations is correct and hence whether an individual is a bone fide expert. Traditional accounts of moral expertise require that moral experts give reliably correct moral advice supported by adequate justification, an account which, I argue, is too lean in allowing for the possibility of a moral expert who is motivationally indifferent to her own moral judgments and advice. Yet even if the proposition that a moral expert is an individual who provides reliably correct moral advice supported by adequate justification and is necessarily motivated by that advice exhausts the necessary and sufficient conditions for moral expertise, this proposition cannot function as an applicable criterion for non-experts to use in appraising would-be experts’ claims to expertise. The credentials problem thus remains unanswered.

Contrasting contributions of phonological short‐term memory and long‐term knowledge to vocabulary learning in a foreign language

The contributions of phonological short‐term memory and existing foreign vocabulary knowledge to the learning of new words in a second language were compared in a sample of 40 Greek children studying English at school. The children's speed of learning new English words in a paired‐associate learning task was strongly influenced by their current English vocabulary, but was independent of phonological memory skill, indexed by nonword repetition ability. However, phonological memory performance was closely linked to English vocabulary scores. The findings suggest that in learners with considerable familiarity with a second language, foreign vocabulary acquisition is mediated largely by use of existing knowledge representations.     

The effect of the Preparing Pequeños small-group cognitive instruction program on academic and concurrent social and behavioral outcomes in young Spanish-speaking dual-language learners

Academic achievement for young dual language learners (DLL) is a critically acknowledged problem of national significance that has been understudied. To address this shortage, this study evaluated the effectiveness of Preparing Pequeños, an integrated small-group instruction program designed to promote increased learning for Spanish speaking DLL in language, literacy, and math. The DLL in the randomized Preparing Pequeños intervention classrooms were compared to control DLL with comparable Spanish language delays and in which the school district's core curriculum was being implemented. Intervention teachers and paraprofessionals, as part of Preparing Pequeños, implemented new classroom and time management systems in order to conduct 90 min of small-group instruction four days each week across the school year. In total, 51 control and 52 intervention classrooms participated; pre-test measures were completed with 829 children, with 777 of these children also completing post-test measures (7% attrition). Results showed that intervention teachers and paraprofessionals, as compared to control, showed greater increases in most of the targeted areas of cognitive instruction (d range = 0.60–2.38) and in the use of small groups (d range = 3.32–4.46), progress monitoring (d = 0.17) to inform instruction, and team teaching (d = 1.94). Intervention children, as compared to control, showed significantly greater gains in Spanish oral language, print knowledge, phonological awareness, and phonics with small to large effect sizes (d range = 0.14–0.52). Also, potentially as a result of greater attention to children's individual needs and support for managing their behavior, intervention children, as compared to control, showed greater decreases in school avoidance, anger, and aggression with small effect sizes (d range = −0.22 to −0.29). Results are discussed in relation to the need for greater attention in teachers' training in effective approaches for small-group instruction.     

On Tacit Knowledge for Philosophy of Education

This article offers a detailed reading Gascoigne and Thornton’s book Tacit Knowledge (2013), which aims to account for the tacitness of tacit knowledge (TK) while preserving its status as knowledge proper. I take issue with their characterization and rejection of the existential-phenomenological Background—which they presuppose even as they dismiss—and their claim that TK can be articulated “from within”—which betrays a residual Cartesianism, the result of their elision of conceptuality and propositionality. Knowledgeable acts instantiate capacities which we might know we have and of which we can be aware, but which are not propositionally structured at their “core”. Nevertheless, propositionality is necessary to what Robert Brandom calls, in Making It Explicit (1994) and Articulating Reasons (2000), “explicitation”, which notion also presupposes a tacit dimension, which is, simply, the embodied person (the knower), without which no conception of knowledge can get any purchase. On my view, there is no knowledgeable act that can be understood as such separately from the notion of skilled corporeal performance. The account I offer cannot make sense of so-called “knowledge-based” education, as opposed to systems and styles which supposedly privilege “contentless” skills over and above “knowledge”, because on the phenomenological and inferentialist lines I endorse, neither the concepts “knowledge” nor “skill” has any purchase or meaning without the other.     

Inflexibility of experts--reality or myth? Quantifying the Einstellung effect in chess masters

How does the knowledge of experts affect their behaviour in situations that require unusual methods of dealing? One possibility, loosely originating in research on creativity and skill acquisition, is that an increase in expertise can lead to inflexibility of thought due to automation of procedures. Yet another possibility, based on expertise research, is that experts' knowledge leads to flexibility of thought. We tested these two possibilities in a series of experiments using the Einstellung (set) effect paradigm. Chess players tried to solve problems that had both a familiar but non-optimal solution and a better but less familiar one. The more familiar solution induced the Einstellung (set) effect even in experts, preventing them from finding the optimal solution. The presence of the non-optimal solution reduced experts' problem solving ability was reduced to about that of players three standard deviations lower in skill level by the presence of the non-optimal solution. Inflexibility of thought induced by prior knowledge (i.e., the blocking effect of the familiar solution) was shown by experts but the more expert they were, the less prone they were to the effect. Inflexibility of experts is both reality and myth. But the greater the level of expertise, the more of a myth it becomes.     

Mental representation and learning: The influence of practice on the development of mental representation structure in complex action

ObjectivesRecent research has elicited distinct differences in mental representations between athletes of different skill levels. Such differences suggest that the structure of mental representations changes as a function of skill level. However, research examining how such mental representation structures develop over the course of learning is lacking. In the present study, we examine the effects of practice on the development of one's mental representation of a complex action during early skill acquisition.DesignFor this purpose, we created a controllable learning situation, using a repeated-measures design with a control group. More specifically, novice golfers were randomly assigned to either a practice group (n = 12) or a control group (n = 12). Both groups were tested before and after an acquisition phase of three days as well as after a three day retention interval.MethodsMental representation structures of the putt were recorded, employing the structural dimensional analysis of mental representation (SDA-M), which provides psychometric data on the structure and grouping of action concepts in long-term memory. In addition, outcome performance of the practice group was measured, using two-dimensional error scores of the putt.ResultsFindings revealed a significant improvement in task performance, as well as functional changes in the structure of the practice group's mental representation. In contrast, no functional adaptations were evident in the mental representation of the control group.ConclusionOur findings suggest that motor skill acquisition is associated with functional adaptations of action-related knowledge in long-term memory.     

Parents’ early book reading to children: Relation to children's later language and literacy outcomes controlling for other parent language input

It is widely believed that reading to preschool children promotes their language and literacy skills. Yet, whether early parent–child book reading is an index of generally rich linguistic input or a unique predictor of later outcomes remains unclear. To address this question, we asked whether naturally occurring parent–child book reading interactions between 1 and 2.5 years‐of‐age predict elementary school language and literacy outcomes, controlling for the quantity of other talk parents provide their children, family socioeconomic status, and children's own early language skill. We find that the quantity of parent–child book reading interactions predicts children's later receptive vocabulary, reading comprehension, and internal motivation to read (but not decoding, external motivation to read, or math skill), controlling for these other factors. Importantly, we also find that parent language that occurs during book reading interactions is more sophisticated than parent language outside book reading interactions in terms of vocabulary diversity and syntactic complexity.     

Slow and fast chess performance across three expert levels

ObjectivesSlow and fast thinking are crucial for human decision making in several domains of human activity including sports. These cognitive processes are remarkable in the intellectually demanding sport of chess. Slow and fast thinking underlie chess performance. However, the relative influence of each process has elicited controversial findings. Moreover, individual differences in chess skill are likely to moderate the integration of both processes.DesignThe simultaneous change over six time points in slow and fast chess performance was analyzed with a cross-domain latent curve model (LCM).MethodArchival data from an extensive group of chess players (n = 32,173) were included in these analyses at untitled, intermediate, and advanced levels of expertise. Intercept and slope latent factors of growth were specified and correlated for both processes.ResultsThere were remarkable differences in the change in slow and fast performance regarding the three expert levels, and in the concurrent interrelationship of both processes. The interdependence between both processes was more robust for the advanced than for the untitled and intermediate players.ConclusionsThese findings suggest that a better integration of slow and fast performance is produced at higher levels of expertise.     

Working Memory and Spoken Language Comprehension in Young Children

This study has two theoretical dimensions: (a) to explore which components of Baddeley's (1986) working memory model are associated with children's spoken language comprehension, and (b) to compare the extent to which measures of the components of this fractionated model and an index of a unitary model (listening span) are able to predict individual differences in spoken language comprehension. Correlational analyses revealed that within a group of 66 4– and 5-year-old children both listening span and phonological memory, but not visuospatial memory, were associated with vocabulary knowledge and spoken language comprehension. However, of the proposed measures of central executive function—dual task coordination, sustained attention, verbal fluency—only the latter was related to children's ability to understand spoken language. Hierarchical regression analyses indicated that variance in vocabulary knowledge was best explained by phonological memory skills, whereas individual differences in spoken language comprehension exhibited unique and independent associations with verbal fluency.