Expert Performance
What does it take to become an expert in any given domain? Can anyone achieve
expert status? Do experts operate in a qualitatively different manner
to novices or lesser-skilled individuals? How do highly skilled individuals
cope with the changing demands of many dynamic, complex and real-world
tasks. Is there such a thing as an adaptive expert? What is the nature
of the cognitive mechanisms that support skilled and expert performance
in professional, occupational, creative, athletic, and recreational
domains? How are these mechanisms acquired and refined such that performance
can be improved beyond mediocrity? Is it possible to continue effective
learning and increase the level of performance of experts and professionals
during their active careers? To what extent is it possible to maintain
current levels of performance of old professionals and thus effectively
extend their productive life-span? These are just some of the research
questions on expertise that faculty within the Cognitive program are
attempting to address. Recent research on expert musicians, chess players,
athletes, auditors, computer scientists and medical doctors have shown
that attained and maintained levels of performance are related to the
degree of engagement in specific daily activities involving deliberate
practice. A better understanding of the mechanisms supporting skilled
performance, and how they are acquired and maintained, can inform educational
practice as well as methods for training and retraining workers. Such
understanding should also prove useful for determining how to maintain
the productivity of an aging population.
FSU has attracted some of the world's leading researchers on the interdisciplinary
study of expert performance to the Department of Psychology and to the
Learning Systems Institute. Collaborative arrangements have been initiated
with FSU faculty in the College of Medicine, School of Nursing, Center
for Music Research (The School of Music), the College of Information
Studies, Department of Accounting (College of Business) and with researchers
studying athletes and dancers in the College of Human Sciences, the
College of Education and the Department of Dance.
The members in this research group are primarily supported by research
grants for basic research on skill acquisition and expert performance
and many of them serve as consultants on applied research projects.
The group thus functions as an exchange for recent findings on expert
performance and organized recently a conference for all of the world
leading researchers on expert performance.
A number of the Cognitive faculty within the Department of Psychology
are affiliated with the Learning Systems Institute's Center for Expert
Performance Research (CEPR: http://www.lsi.fsu.edu/cepr/) at FSU. This
is a dedicated research facility specifically designed for the purposes
of objectively examining expert performance. The center contains state-of-the-art
simulation and measurement equipment used to create representative tasks
and capture the essential characteristics of expertise. Current research
focuses on the structure and acquisition of skilled performance and
involves work with expert cohorts from domains such as law enforcement,
critical care nursing, emergency medicine, sport and the military. Collaborative
projects are also in progress with universities across Florida (Florida
Alliance for the study of Expertise; FASE) and across the country (National
Alliance for Expertise Studies).
Faculty involved in research on
expertise:
Neil Charness (Cognitive)
Anders Ericsson (Cognitive)
Rick Wagner (Cognitive)
Paul Ward (Cognitive)
Bud Fennema (Accounting)
David Pargman (Educational Research)
Jack Taylor (Center for Music Research)
Gershon Tennenbaum (College of Human Sciences)
Tonya Toole (Nutrition, Food & Movement Science)
Thomas Welsh (Dance)
Selected Publications:
Charness, N., Tuffiash, M., Krampe, R., Reingold, E. M., & Vasyukova,
E. (2005). The role of deliberate practice in chess expertise. Applied
Cognitive Psychology, 19, 151-165.
Ericsson, K. A., Charness, N., Feltovich, P., & Hoffman, R. (Eds.)
(2006). Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance.
Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
