Error in chess: The apperception-restructuring view

Summary Five protocol-analysis experiments with tactical, endgame, and strategic positions were conducted to study cognitive errors in chess players' thinking. It will be argued that chess players' errors can be only partially explained in terms of unspecified working-memory overload, because the working-memory loads caused by the solution paths are usually small. It is therefore necessary to consider apperceptive mechanisms also, as these control information intake.Subjects fail either because they are not able to see the right prototypical problem space at all, or because they fail to close them as a result of missing some crucial task-relevant cue. This makes chess players lose their belief in the idea and restructure, after which the apperceptive information-selection mechanisms make the fording of the solution still more unlikely.