Neuroscience
Recent issues of both Scientific American & Wired have featured articles about geniuses / expert minds, from two different perspectives.
The August, 2006 issue of Scientific American looks at The Expert Mind (full article online!) from the perspective of a chess player. Why? Chess skills can be measured very precisely and is very popular with cognitive scientists studying "thinking." Plus, of course, chess is for smarties.
Apparently much of the skill is linked to "chunking", whereby chess masters condense large bits of data into small chunks. Much as we can remember phone numbers (ideally) of 7 +/- digits, so chess masters can remember chess in bits, or chunks, of 7 +/- bits. BUT the expert can parse much more information into each chunk, so they can process new information much faster than non-experts.
This expert-ness happens only with LOTS of practice, and the practice needs to be of a certain level -- that is, the student must always be working at a level just beyond his current level of expertise to show consistent improvement.
Scientific American: The Expert Mind [ PSYCHOLOGY AND BRAIN SCIENCE ]
By Philip E. Ross
Scientific American, August 2006
Studies of the mental processes of chess grandmasters have revealed clues to how people become experts in other fields as well.
I'll report on the Wired article tomorrow.
- Link Feast
Our pick of this week's 10 best psychology and neuroscience links: IQ Tests Have Been Unfairly Maligned Intelligent words on intelligence from psychologist (and previous Digest guest blogger) Stuart Ritchie. I Tried a Brain-Zapping Gadget and It Made...
- Link Feast
Our pick of the best psychology and neuroscience links from the past week or so: Brain Games Exploit Anxieties About Memory Loss For Profit – Scientists A group of over 70 psychologists and neuroscientists has written an open letter warning that the...
- Exploding The 10,000 Hours Myth - It's No Guarantee For Greatness
Swedish psychologist K. Anders Ericsson has studied elite performers in music, chess and sport for decades, and he says the main distinguishing characteristic of experts is the amount of deliberate practice they've invested - typically over 10,000...
- Girls Underperform When They Play Chess Against Boys - Real-life Evidence Of Stereotype Threat?
Judit Polgár, chess grandmasterAn analysis of girls' performances in 12 US school chess tournaments has found they tend to underperform when playing against boys. The researchers Hank Rothgerber and Katie Wolsiefer believe this is the first real-life...
- Is Cognition Extended?
Over the past week or two, we've been engaging philosopher of psychology Ken Aizawa on the topic of extended cognition. Ken is co-author of a book, Bounds of Cognition, in which he argues cognition is most definitely not extended in any way. We both...
Neuroscience
Geniuses in the News
Recent issues of both Scientific American & Wired have featured articles about geniuses / expert minds, from two different perspectives.
The August, 2006 issue of Scientific American looks at The Expert Mind (full article online!) from the perspective of a chess player. Why? Chess skills can be measured very precisely and is very popular with cognitive scientists studying "thinking." Plus, of course, chess is for smarties.
Apparently much of the skill is linked to "chunking", whereby chess masters condense large bits of data into small chunks. Much as we can remember phone numbers (ideally) of 7 +/- digits, so chess masters can remember chess in bits, or chunks, of 7 +/- bits. BUT the expert can parse much more information into each chunk, so they can process new information much faster than non-experts.
This expert-ness happens only with LOTS of practice, and the practice needs to be of a certain level -- that is, the student must always be working at a level just beyond his current level of expertise to show consistent improvement.
Scientific American: The Expert Mind [ PSYCHOLOGY AND BRAIN SCIENCE ]
By Philip E. Ross
Scientific American, August 2006
Studies of the mental processes of chess grandmasters have revealed clues to how people become experts in other fields as well.
I'll report on the Wired article tomorrow.
- Link Feast
Our pick of this week's 10 best psychology and neuroscience links: IQ Tests Have Been Unfairly Maligned Intelligent words on intelligence from psychologist (and previous Digest guest blogger) Stuart Ritchie. I Tried a Brain-Zapping Gadget and It Made...
- Link Feast
Our pick of the best psychology and neuroscience links from the past week or so: Brain Games Exploit Anxieties About Memory Loss For Profit – Scientists A group of over 70 psychologists and neuroscientists has written an open letter warning that the...
- Exploding The 10,000 Hours Myth - It's No Guarantee For Greatness
Swedish psychologist K. Anders Ericsson has studied elite performers in music, chess and sport for decades, and he says the main distinguishing characteristic of experts is the amount of deliberate practice they've invested - typically over 10,000...
- Girls Underperform When They Play Chess Against Boys - Real-life Evidence Of Stereotype Threat?
Judit Polgár, chess grandmasterAn analysis of girls' performances in 12 US school chess tournaments has found they tend to underperform when playing against boys. The researchers Hank Rothgerber and Katie Wolsiefer believe this is the first real-life...
- Is Cognition Extended?
Over the past week or two, we've been engaging philosopher of psychology Ken Aizawa on the topic of extended cognition. Ken is co-author of a book, Bounds of Cognition, in which he argues cognition is most definitely not extended in any way. We both...