Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Contributors
- PART I INTRODUCTION AND PERSPECTIVE
- 1 An Introduction to The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance: Its Development, Organization, and Content
- 2 Two Approaches to the Study of Experts' Characteristics
- 3 Expertise, Talent, and Social Encouragement
- PART II OVERVIEW OF APPROACHES TO THE STUDY OF EXPERTISE – BRIEF HISTORICAL ACCOUNTS OF THEORIES AND METHODS
- PART III METHODS FOR STUDYING THE STRUCTURE OF EXPERTISE
- PART IV METHODS FOR STUDYING THE ACQUISITION AND MAINTENANCE OF EXPERTISE
- PART V DOMAINS OF EXPERTISE
- PART VI GENERALIZABLE MECHANISMS MEDIATING EXPERTISE AND GENERAL ISSUES
- Author Index
- Subject Index
- References
This chapter is part of a book that is no longer available to purchase from Cambridge Core
3 - Expertise, Talent, and Social Encouragement
from PART I - INTRODUCTION AND PERSPECTIVE
Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Contributors
- PART I INTRODUCTION AND PERSPECTIVE
- 1 An Introduction to The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance: Its Development, Organization, and Content
- 2 Two Approaches to the Study of Experts' Characteristics
- 3 Expertise, Talent, and Social Encouragement
- PART II OVERVIEW OF APPROACHES TO THE STUDY OF EXPERTISE – BRIEF HISTORICAL ACCOUNTS OF THEORIES AND METHODS
- PART III METHODS FOR STUDYING THE STRUCTURE OF EXPERTISE
- PART IV METHODS FOR STUDYING THE ACQUISITION AND MAINTENANCE OF EXPERTISE
- PART V DOMAINS OF EXPERTISE
- PART VI GENERALIZABLE MECHANISMS MEDIATING EXPERTISE AND GENERAL ISSUES
- Author Index
- Subject Index
- References
Summary
Introduction
There have literally been volumes of studies of expertise (Chi, Glaser, & Farr, 1988; Ericsson, 1996; Ericsson & Smith, 1991; Sternberg & Grigorenko, 2001). The fields covered range from medicine to amateur wrestling. In spite of this diversity, regular themes emerge.
Experts know a lot about their field of expertise. This is hardly surprising; an ignorant expert would be an oxymoron. Experts work at becoming experts. The revealed wisdom is that this takes at least ten years (Richman et al., 1996). In some fields the time is spent perfecting the minutiae rather than in the fun of solving problems or winning games. Amateur musicians spend a great deal of time playing pieces, whereas professional musicians spend a great deal of time practicing sequences of movements (Ericsson, Krampe, & Tesch-Römer, 1993). Chess masters do not just play a lot of chess, they read a lot of the chess literature.
Because practice is so important, some psychologists have minimized the contribution of talents developed before starting on the path to expertise (Ericsson et al., 1993; Sloboda, 1996). This position is consistent with well-established laboratory findings showing that under certain circumstances extended practice can lead to improvements in performance by an order of magnitude, along with a huge reduction in the range of interindividual differences (Schneider & Shiffrin, 1977).
In this chapter I explore the relation between studies of expertise and a few selected results from different areas of psychology and economics.
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- Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2006
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