Deliberation Versus Intuition: Decomposing the Role of Expertise in Judgment and Decision Making

What produces better judgments: deliberating or relying on intuition? Past research is inconclusive. We focus on the role of expertise to increase understanding of the effects of judgment mode. We propose a framework in which expertise depends on a person's experience with and knowledge about a domain. Individuals who are relatively experienced but have modest knowledge about the subject matter (“intermediates”) are expected to suffer from deliberation and to benefit from a more intuitive approach, because they lack the formal knowledge to understand the reasons underlying their preferences. Individuals who are high (“experts”) or low (“novices”) on both experience and knowledge are expected to do well or poorly, respectively, regardless of decision mode. We tested these predictions in the domain of art. Experiments 1 and 2 showed that intermediates performed better when relying on intuition than after deliberation. Judgments of experts and novices were unaffected. In line with previous research relating processing style to judgment mode, Experiment 3 showed that the effect of processing style (global versus local) on judgment quality is similarly moderated by expertise. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Developmental Path to Expertise in Group Psychotherapy

This paper describes a trajectory by which an individual achieves expertise in group psychotherapy. Five developmental stages are posited. In the decisional-anticipatory stage, interest is developed in group psychotherapy. In the trainee stage, the individual masters the knowledge base of group psychotherapy and obtains fledgling experiences in a group. In the novice stage, the individual obtains additional experience in running groups and becomes socialized into a community of group psychotherapists. In the proficiency stage, the individual narrows his or her group psychotherapy focus and obtains more specialized experience in that area. At this time, supervisory and consultation skills are often developed. In the final stage of expertise, the expert must engage in a process of recognizing its limits and must devise ways to maintain it. Research that focuses on one aspect of expertise, level of experience, is reviewed. Three dimensions of difference are identified: (a) complexity of conceptualization of members and interventions; (b) fostering openness and engagement; and (c) focusing on process.     

Personality and the use of intuition: individual differences in strategy and performance on an implicit learning task

There is a divergence of opinion regarding the existence of individual differences in the use of intuition, ranging from intuition being the preserve of a creative minority to intuition as a basic cognitive process that is equally accessible to all. The existence and nature of individual differences in the use of intuition were explored by studying relationships between the sensing–intuition scale of the Myers–Briggs Type Indicator and strategy and performance on an implicit learning task. Results indicated differences in strategy and performance in implicit learning between sensing and intuitive types. Intuitive types were more likely to report a strategy of using intuition; sensing types were more likely to use explicit knowledge. In addition, intuitive types were more accurate than sensing types in their intuition. Thus, the position that there are individual differences in the use of intuition has been supported. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Curse of Expertise: When More Knowledge Leads to Miscalibrated Explanatory Insight

Does expertise within a domain of knowledge predict accurate self‐assessment of the ability to explain topics in that domain? We find that expertise increases confidence in the ability to explain a wide variety of phenomena. However, this confidence is unwarranted; after actually offering full explanations, people are surprised by the limitations in their understanding. For passive expertise (familiar topics), miscalibration is moderated by education; those with more education are accurate in their self‐assessments (Experiment 1). But when those with more education consider topics related to their area of concentrated study (college major), they also display an illusion of understanding (Experiment 2). This “curse of expertise” is explained by a failure to recognize the amount of detailed information that had been forgotten (Experiment 3). While expertise can sometimes lead to accurate self‐knowledge, it can also create illusions of competence.     

Intuition and Visualization in Mathematical Problem Solving

In this article, I will discuss the relationship between mathematical intuition and mathematical visualization. I will argue that in order to investigate this relationship, it is necessary to consider mathematical activity as a complex phenomenon, which involves many different cognitive resources. I will focus on two kinds of danger in recurring to visualization and I will show that they are not a good reason to conclude that visualization is not reliable, if we consider its use in mathematical practice. Then, I will give an example of mathematical reasoning with a figure, and show that both visualization and intuition are involved. I claim that mathematical intuition depends on background knowledge and expertise, and that it allows to see the generality of the conclusions obtained by means of visualization.     

L'impact des schémas non analogiques conceptuels dans la compréhension de textes expositifs : stratégies visuelles selon l'expertise

The main objectives of this study are: 1) to determine the contribution of a conceptual not-analogical schema in an expositive text's comprehension and memorizing according to the reader's previous knowledge level in the field approached in the text; 2) to identify the differentiated reading strategies according to the reader's previous knowledge level in the field when it is about understanding expositive schematized texts via ocular movements recording on one hand and the score given on the comprehension questions on the other hand. The results highlight a reading strategy with more Text/Schema transitions accompanied by longer fixations on the textual zone for the items for which the subjects are novice in the field than for those whose contents relate to their expertise field.     

How Experts Solve a Novel Problem in Experimental Design

Research on expert-novice differences has mainly focused on how experts solve familiar problems. We know far less about the skills and knowledge used by experts when they are confronted with novel problems within their area of expertise. This article discusses a study in which verbal protocols were taken from subjects of various expertise designing an experiment in an area with which they were unfamiliar. The results showed that even when domain knowledge is lacking, experts solve a novel problem within their area of expertise by dividing the problem into a number of subproblems that are solved in a specified order. The lack of domain knowledge is compensated for by using abstract knowledge structures and domain-specific heuristic strategies. However, the quality of their solutions is considerably lower than the quality attained by experts who were familiar with the type of problem to be solved. The results suggest that when experts are confronted with novel problems as compared with familiar problems, their form of reasoning remains intact, but the content of their reasoning suffers due to lack of domain knowledge.     

Intuition Fail: Philosophical Activity and the Limits of Expertise

Experimental philosophers have empirically challenged the connection between intuition and philosophical expertise. This paper reviews these challenges alongside other research findings in cognitive science on expert performance and argues for three claims. First, evidence taken to challenge philosophical expertise may also be explained by the well‐researched failures and limitations of genuine expertise. Second, studying the failures and limitations of experts across many fields provides a promising research program upon which to base a new model of philosophical expertise. Third, a model of philosophical expertise based on the limitations of genuine experts may suggest a series of constraints on the reliability of professional philosophical intuition.

Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken. — Bertrand Russell, On the Value of Scepticism

     

Husserl’s Foundation of the Formal Sciences in his “Logical Investigations”

This article is composed of three sections that investigate the epistemological foundations of Husserl’s idea of logic from the Logical Investigations. First, it shows the general structure of this logic. Husserl conceives of logic as a comprehensive, multi-layered theory of possible theories that has its most fundamental level in a doctrine of meaning. This doctrine aims to determine the elementary categories that constitute every possible meaning (meaning-categories). The second section presents the main idea of Husserl’s search for an epistemological foundation for knowledge, science and logic. Their epistemological clarification can only be reached through a detailed analysis of the structure of those intentions that give us what is meant in our intentions. To reveal the intuitive giveness of logical forms is the ultimate aim of Husserl’s epistemology of logic. Logical forms and meaning-categories can only be given in a certain higher-order intuition that Husserl calls categorical intuition. The third section of this article distinguishes different kinds of categorical intuition and shows how the most basic logical categories and concepts are given to us in a categorical abstraction.     

A Noetic Theory of Understanding and Intuition as Sense-Maker

Abstract

The notion of a non-sensory mental state or event that plays a prominent role in coming to understand, an epistemic achievement distinct from mere knowledge, featured prominently in historical writings on philosophy, and philosophical methodology. It is, however, completely absent from contemporary discussions of the subject. This paper argues that intuition plays an epistemic role in understanding, including philosophical understanding, and offers an explanation of how intuition manages to play this role, if and when it does. It is argued, subsequently, that this role is autonomous, in the sense that a source of understanding cannot be reduced to a source of justification, evidence, or reason. Finally, it is noted that such autonomy implies that popular forms of skepticism about intuition do not impugn intuition’s epistemic significance with respect to its status as a source of understanding.     

Familiarity effects on categorization levels of faces and objects

It is well established that faces, in contrast to objects, are categorized as fast or faster at the individual level (e.g., Bill Clinton) than at the basic-level (e.g., human face). This subordinate-shift from basic-level categorization has been considered an outcome of visual expertise with processing faces. However, in the present study we found that, similar to familiar faces, categorization of individually-known familiar towers is also faster at the individual level than at the basic-level in naïve participants. In addition, category-verification of familiar stimuli, at basic and superordinate levels, was slower and less accurate compared to unfamiliar stimuli. Thus, the existence of detailed semantic information, regardless of expertise, can induce a shift in the default level of object categorization from basic to individual level. Moreover, the individually-specific knowledge is not only more easily-retrieved from memory but it might also interfere with accessing more general category information.     

Not strange but not true: self-reported interest in a topic increases false memory

People are more likely to recall both true and false information that is consistent with their pre-existing stereotypes, schemata and desires. In addition, experts in a particular field are more likely to experience false memory in relation to their area of expertise. Here, we investigate whether level of interest, as distinct from level of knowledge, and in the absence of self-professed expertise, is associated with increased false memory. 489 participants were asked to rank 7 topics from most to least interesting. They were then asked if they remembered the events described in four news items related to the topic they selected as the most interesting and four items related to the topic selected as least interesting. In each case, three of the events depicted had really happened and one was fictional. A high level of interest in a topic increased true memories for the topic and doubled the frequency of false memories, even after controlling for level of knowledge. We interpret the results in the context of the source-monitoring framework and suggest that false memories arise as a result of interference from existing information stored in domain-related schemata.     

Chess knowledge predicts chess memory even after controlling for chess experience: Evidence for the role of high-level processes

The expertise effect in memory for chess positions is one of the most robust effects in cognitive psychology. One explanation of this effect is that chess recall is based on the recognition of familiar patterns and that experts have learned more and larger patterns. Template theory and its instantiation as a computational model are based on this explanation. An alternative explanation is that the expertise effect is due, in part, to stronger players having better and more conceptual knowledge, with this knowledge facilitating memory performance. Our literature review supports the latter view. In our experiment, a sample of 79 chess players were given a test of memory for chess positions, a test of declarative chess knowledge, a test of fluid intelligence, and a questionnaire concerning the amount of time they had played nontournament chess and the amount of time they had studied chess. We determined the numbers of tournament games the players had played from chess databases. Chess knowledge correlated .67 with chess memory and accounted for 16% of the variance after controlling for chess experience. Fluid intelligence accounted for an additional 13% of the variance. These results support the conclusion that both high-level conceptual processing and low-level recognition of familiar patterns play important roles in memory for chess positions.     

When should I trust my gut? Linking domain expertise to intuitive decision-making effectiveness

Despite a growing body of scholarship on the concept of intuition, there is a scarcity of empirical research spotlighting the circumstances in which intuitive decision making is effective relative to analytical decision making. Seeking to address this deficiency, we conducted two laboratory studies assessing the link between domain expertise (low versus high) and intuitive decision-making effectiveness. These studies involved non-decomposable tasks across divergent expertise domains: basketball in Study 1 and designer handbag authentication in Study 2. Across both studies, and consistent with our overarching hypothesis, we found that the effectiveness of intuition relative to analysis is amplified at a high level of domain expertise. Taken together, our results demonstrate the importance of domain expertise in intuitive decision making and carry a number of theoretical and practical implications.     

Children as mediators of their own cognitive development: The case of learning science in kindergarten and first grade

As the United States experiences greater income inequality, more and more students experience an early science achievement gap. This study tested several competing theoretical models of early science achievement with a longitudinal sample of 14,624 children who were followed from kindergarten entry to the end of 1st grade. To understand why and when differences emerge among children, we adopted a theoretical approach to study early science achievement because theories, if they are accurate, appeal to the factors responsible for achievement differences. Results from a structural equation modeling analysis revealed a mediation-only model provided an excellent fit to the data that was minimally changed when some of the indirect pathways were dropped and several direct pathways were added. This finding suggests that children who are more advanced in their understanding of science topics, have more expertise, or have more working-memory capacity are likely to process the same classroom material more effectively and completely than their classmates who have a less advanced understanding, less expertise, or less working-memory capacity. From a theoretical perspective, these findings provide strong support for individual theories of conceptual knowledge, expertise, working memory, and motivational development, and they also demonstrate the value of a large-scale, longitudinal, and multivariate approach for understanding science achievement. Implications for developmental theory and educational policy are discussed.     

Intuitive knowledge

In this paper I assume that we have some intuitive knowledge—i.e. beliefs that amount to knowledge because they are based on intuitions. The question I take up is this: given that some intuition makes a belief based on it amount to knowledge, in virtue of what does it do so? We can ask a similar question about perception. That is: given that some perception makes a belief based on it amount to knowledge, in virtue of what does it do so? A natural idea about perception is that a perception makes a belief amount to knowledge in part by making you sensorily aware of the concrete objects it is about. The analogous idea about intuition is that an intuition makes a belief amount to knowledge in part by making you intellectually aware of the abstract objects it is about. I expand both ideas into fuller accounts of perceptual and intuitive knowledge, explain the main challenge to this sort of account of intuitive knowledge (i.e. the challenge of making sense of intellectual awareness), and develop a response to it.     

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.     

A logistic approach to knowledge structures

Models for quantitative (or numerical) testing like e.g. educational testing have a relatively long tradition in psychology, while the qualitative (or nonnumerical) approach to psychometrics is more recent. The approach presented in this paper can be regarded as an attempt to integrate, to some extent, the numerical and nonnumerical fields. In numerical testing a subject is characterized by some real-valued parameter representing her level or ability. In the nonnumerical approach the knowledge state of an individual is represented by the subset of problems that the individual is capable of solving. We propose a model in which the relationship between the ability levels and the knowledge states is worked out on a probabilistic basis. The central idea is that the ability parameters and the knowledge states are not independent. A logistic model is derived which specifies the probabilities of the knowledge states conditional on the ability levels. We show that the Rasch model arises as a special case of the proposed model.     

多项式加工树模型在再认启发式中的应用

摘 要 再认启发式利用再认线索进行决策。以往研究采用一致率、击中率、虚报率和区分指数来表示再认启发式使用,然而这些方法都存在局限。多项式加工树模型能够分离不同的认知加工过程,为了解决再认使用与知识使用的混淆,研究者提出一种多项式加工树模型 r-model 测量再认启发式的使用。本文将重 点介绍 r-model,具体包括 r-model 的内容、数据分析以及考虑个体差异的分层 r-model。最后,从 r-model 的模型修正和边界条件两个方面提出未来研究方向。 关键词 再认启发式;流畅启发式;多项式加工树;贝叶斯分层模型     

当代知识论:出场路径及其作为方法论和认识论

<正>当代知识论(contemporary theory of knowledge)作为哲学运动,是两股支流的汇合:一是它作为关于"知识是信念"的理论,乃孕育于作为方法论的分析哲学;二是它作为关于主体之经验直观能力的理论,乃是对从笛卡尔到康德的传统认识论的延伸。这决定了它包括两个部分,分别作为方法论和认识论。