Two Approaches to the Study of Experts’ Characteristics - Michelene T. H. Chi

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C H A P T E R 2

Two Approaches to the Studyof Experts’ Characteristics

Michelene T. H. Chi

This chapter differentiates two approachesto the study of expertise, which I callthe “absolute approach” and the “relativeapproach,” and what each approach impliesfor how expertise is assessed. It then summa-rizes the characteristic ways in which expertsexcel and the ways that they sometimesseem to fall short of common expectations.

Two Approaches to the Studyof Expertise

The nature of expertise has been studied intwo general ways. One way is to study trulyexceptional people with the goal of under-standing how they perform in their domainof expertise. I use the term domain looselyto refer to both informal domains, such assewing and cooking, and formal domains,such as biology and chess. One could chooseexceptional people on the basis of theirwell-established discoveries. For example,one could study how Maxwell constructeda quantitative field concept (Nersessian,1992). Or one could choose contemporaryscientists whose breakthroughs may still be

debated, such as pathologist Warren and gas-troenterologist Marshall’s proposal that bac-teria cause peptic ulcers (Chi & Hausmann,2003 ; Thagard, 1998; also see the chaptersby Wilding & Valentine, Chapter 31, Simon-ton, Chapter 18, and Weisberg, Chapter 42).

Several methods can be used to identifysomeone who is truly an exceptional expert.One method is retrospective. That is, bylooking at how well an outcome or prod-uct is received, one can determine who is oris not an expert. For example, to identify agreat composer, one can examine a quanti-tative index, such as how often his or hermusic was broadcast (Kozbelt, 2004). A sec-ond method may be some kind of concur-rent measure, such as a rating system as aresult of tournaments, as in chess (Elo, 1965),or as a result of examinations (Masunaga &Horn, 2000), or just measures of how wellthe exceptional expert performs his task. Athird method might be the use of some inde-pendent index, if it is available. In chess,for example, there exists a task called theKnight’s Tour that requires a player to movea Knight Piece across the rows of a chessboard, using legal Knight Moves. The time it

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2 2 the cambridge handbook of expertise and expert performance

Table 2 .1. A proficiency scale (adapted from Hoffman, 1998).

Naive One who is totally ignorant of a domain

Novice Literally, someone who is new – a probationary member. There has been someminimal exposure to the domain.

Initiate Literally, a novice who has been through an initiation ceremony and has begunintroductory instruction.

Apprentice Literally, one who is learning – a student undergoing a program of instructionbeyond the introductory level. Traditionally, the apprentice is immersed in thedomain by living with and assisting someone at a higher level. The length of anapprenticeship depends on the domain, ranging from about one to 12 years inthe Craft Guilds.

Journeyman Literally, a person who can perform a day’s labor unsupervised, although workingunder orders. An experienced and reliable worker, or one who has achieved alevel of competence. Despite high levels of motivation, it is possible to remainat this proficiency level for life.

Expert The distinguished or brilliant journeyman, highly regarded by peers, whosejudgments are uncommonly accurate and reliable, whose performance showsconsummate skill and economy of effort, and who can deal effectively withcertain types of rare or “tough” cases. Also, an expert is one who has specialskills or knowledge derived from extensive experience with subdomains.

Master Traditionally, a master is any journeyman or expert who is also qualified to teachthose at a lower level. Traditionally, a master is one of an elite group of expertswhose judgments set the regulations, standards, or ideals. Also, a master can bethat expert who is regarded by the other experts as being “the” expert, or the“real” expert, especially with regard to sub-domain knowledge.

takes to complete the moves is an indicationof one’s chess skill (Chi, 1978). Although thistask is probably not sensitive enough to dis-criminate among the exceptional experts, atask such as this can be adapted as an index ofexpertise. In short, to identify a truly excep-tional expert, one often resorts to some kindof measure of performance. The assessmentof exceptional experts needs to be accuratesince the goal is to understand their supe-rior performance. Thus, this approach stud-ies the remarkable few to understand howthey are distinguished from the masses.

Though expertise can be studied in thecontext of “exceptional” individuals, thereis a tacit assumption in the literature thatperhaps these individuals somehow havegreater minds in the sense that the “globalqualities of their thinking” might be dif-ferent (Minsky & Papert, 1974 , p. 59). Forexample, they might utilize more power-ful domain-general heuristics that novicesare not aware of, or they may be natu-rally endowed with greater memory capacity(Pascual-Leone, 1970; Simonton, 1977). Thisline of reasoning is extended to cognitive

functioning probably because genetic inheri-tance does seem to be a relevant componentfor expertise in music and sports. In short,the tacit assumption is that greatness or cre-ativity arises from chance and unique innatetalent (Simonton, 1977). Let’s call this typeof work in psychology the study of excep-tional or absolute expertise.

A second research approach to expertiseis to study experts in comparison to novices.This relative approach assumes that exper-tise is a level of proficiency that novices canachieve. Because of this assumption, thedefinition of expertise for this contras-tive approach can be more relative, in thesense that the more knowledgeable groupcan be considered the “experts” and the lessknowledgeable group the “novices.” Thusthe term “novices” is used here in a genericsense, in that it can refer to a range of non-experts, from the naives to the journeymen(see Table 2 .1 for definitions).

Proficiency level can be grossly assessedby measures such as academic qualifications(such as graduate students vs. undergrad-uates), seniority or years performing the

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task, or consensus among peers. It can alsobe assessed at a more fine-grained level, interms of domain-specific knowledge or per-formance tests.

One advantage of this second approach,the study of “relative expertise,” is that wecan be a little less precise about how todefine expertise since experts are definedas relative to novices on a continuum. Inthis relative approach, a goal is to under-stand how we can enable a less skilled orexperienced persons to become more skilledsince the assumption is that expertise can beattained by a majority of students. This goalhas the advantage of illuminating our under-standing of learning since presumably themore skilled person became expert-like fromhaving acquired knowledge about a domain,that is, from learning and studying (Chi &Bassok, 1989) and from deliberate practice(Ericsson, Chapter 38; Ericsson, Krampe, &Tesch-Romer, 1993 ; Weisberg, 1999). Thus,the goal of studying relative expertise is notmerely to describe and identify the ways inwhich experts excel. Rather, the goal is tounderstand how experts became that way sothat others can learn to become more skilledand knowledgeable.

Because our definition characterizesexperts as being more knowledgeable thannon-experts, such a definition entails sev-eral fundamental theoretical assumptions.First, it assumes that experts are peoplewho have acquired more knowledge in adomain (Ericsson & Smith, 1991, Table 2 .1)and that this knowledge is organized orstructured (Bedard & Chi, 1992). Second,it assumes that the fundamental capacitiesand domain-general reasoning abilities ofexperts and non-experts are more or lessidentical. Third, this framework assumesthat differences in the performance ofexperts and non-experts are determined bythe differences in the way their knowledgeis represented.

Manifestations of Experts’ Skillsand Shortcomings

Numerous behavioral manifestations ofexpertise have been identified in the

research literature and discussed at somelength (see edited volumes by Chi, Glaser, &Farr, 1988; Ericsson & Smith, 1991; Ericsson,1996; Feltovich, Ford, & Hoffman, 1997;Hoffman, 1992). Most of the research hasfocused on how experts excel, either inan absolute context or in comparison tonovices. However, it is equally important tounderstand how experts fail. Knowing bothhow they excel and how they fail will pro-vide a more complete characterization ofexpertise. This section addresses both sets ofcharacteristics.

Ways in which Experts Excel

I begin by very briefly highlighting sevenmajor ways in which experts excel becausethis set of findings have been reviewedextensively in the literature, followed by aslightly more elaborate discussion of sevenways in which they fall short.

generating the best

Experts excel in generating the best solu-tion, such as the best move in chess, evenunder time constraints (de Groot, 1965), orthe best solution in solving problems, or thebest design in a designing task. Moreover,they can do this faster and more accuratelythan non-experts (Klein, 1993).

detection and recognition

Experts can detect and see features thatnovices cannot. For example, they can seepatterns and cue configurations in X-rayfilms that novices cannot (Lesgold et al.,1988). They can also perceive the “deepstructure” of a problem or situation (Chi,Feltovich, & Glaser, 1981).

qualitative analyses

Experts spend a relatively great deal of timeanalyzing a problem qualitatively, devel-oping a problem representation by addingmany domain-specific and general con-straints to the problems in their domainsof expertise (Simon & Simon, 1978; Voss,Greene, Post, & Penner, 1983).



monitoring

Experts have more accurate self-monitoringskills in terms of their ability to detecterrors and the status of their own com-prehension. In the domain of physics,experts were more accurate than novices injudging the difficulty of a problem (Chi,Glaser, & Rees, 1982). In the domain ofchess, expert (Class B) chess players weremore accurate than novices in predictingthe number of pieces they thought theycould recall immediately or the number oftimes they thought they needed to view achess position in order to recall the entireposition correctly. Moreover, the expertswere significantly more accurate in dis-criminating their ability to recall the ran-domized (positions with the pieces scram-bled) from the meaningful chess positions,whereas novices thought they could recallequal number of pieces from the random-ized as well as the meaningful positions(Chi, 1978).

strategies

Experts are more successful at choosing theappropriate strategies to use than novices.For example, in solving physics problems,the instructors tend to work forward,starting from the given state to the goalstate, whereas students of physics tend towork backwards, from the unknown tothe givens (Larkin, McDermott, Simon, &Simon, 1980). Similarly, when confrontedwith routine cases, expert clinicians diag-nose with a data-driven (forward-working)approach by applying a small set of rulesto the data; whereas less expert clini-cians tend to use a hypothesis-driven (back-ward chaining) approach (Patel & Kaufman,1995). Even though both more-expert andthe less-expert groups can use both kindsof strategies, one group may use one kindmore successfully than the other kind.Experts not only will know which strat-egy or procedure is better for a situa-tion, but they also are more likely thannovices to use strategies that have more fre-quently proved to be effective (Lemaire &Siegler, 1995).

opportunistic

Experts are more opportunistic thannovices; they make use of whatever sourcesof information are available while solv-ing problems (Gilhooly et al., 1997) andalso exhibit more opportunism in usingresources.

cognitive effort

Experts can retrieve relevant domain knowl-edge and strategies with minimal cognitiveeffort (Alexander, 2003 , p. 3). They can alsoexecute their skills with greater automatic-ity (Schneider, 1985) and are able to exertgreater cognitive control over those aspectsof performance where control is desirable(Ericsson, Chapter 13).

Ways in which Experts Fall Short

An equally important list might be ways inwhich experts do not excel (Sternberg, 1996;Sternberg & Frensch, 1992). Because muchless has been written about experts’ handi-caps, I present a slightly more extensive dis-cussion of seven ways in which experts donot surpass novices. This list also excludeslimitations that are apparent in experts, butin fact novices would be subjected to thesame limitations if they have the knowledge.For example, experts often cannot articu-late their knowledge because much of theirknowledge is tacit and their overt intuitionscan be flawed. This creates a science ofknowledge elicitation to collaboratively cre-ate a model of an expert’s knowledge (Ford &Adams-Webber, 1992). However, this short-coming is not listed below since noviceswould most likely have the same problemexcept that their limitation is less apparentsince they have less knowledge to explicate.

domain-limited

Expertise is domain-limited. Experts do notexcel in recall for domains in which theyhave no expertise. For example, the chessmaster’s recall of randomized chess boardpositions is much less accurate than therecall for actual positions from chess games(Gobet & Simon, 1996), and the engineer’s



attempt to recall the state of affairs ofthermal-hydraulic processes that are notphysically meaningful is much less success-ful than attempts to recall such states thatare meaningfull (Vicente, 1992). There area number of demonstrations from variousother domains that show experts’ superiorrecall compared to novices for representa-tive situations but not for randomly rear-ranged versions of the same stimuli (Ericsson& Lehmann, 1996; Vicente & Wang, 1998).Thus, the superiority associated with theirexpertise is very much limited to a specificdomain.

Of course there are exceptions. For exam-ple, expert chess players can display a reli-able, but comparatively small, superiority ofmemory performance for randomized chesspositions when they are briefly presented(see Gobet & Charness, Chapter 30), orwhen the random positions are presentedat slower rates (Ericsson, Patel, & Kinstch,2000). Nevertheless, in general, their exper-tise is domain-limited.

overly confident

Experts can also miscalibrate their capabil-ities by being overly confident. Chi (1978)found that the experts (as compared to boththe novices and the intermediates) overesti-mated the number of chess pieces they couldrecall from coherent chess positions (seeFigure 9, left panel, Chi, 1978). Similarly,physics and music experts overestimatedtheir comprehension of a physics or musictext, respectively, whereas novices were farmore accurate (Glenberg & Epstein, 1987).It seems that experts can be overly confi-dent in judgments related to their field ofexpertise (Oskamp, 1965). Of course, thereare also domains, such as weather forecast-ing, for which experts can be cautious andconservative (Hoffman, Trafron, & Roebber2005).

glossing over

Although experts surpass novices in under-standing and remembering the deep struc-ture of a problem, a situation, or a computerprogram, sometimes experts fail to recall

the surface features and overlook details. Forexample, in recalling a text passage describ-ing a baseball game, individuals with highbaseball knowledge actually recalled fewerbaseball-irrelevant sentences than individ-uals with low baseball knowledge (Voss,Vesonder, & Spilich, 1980), such as sentencescontaining information about the weatherand the team. But high-knowledge indi-viduals do recall information that is rele-vant to the goal structure of the game, aswell as changes in the game states. Simi-larly, in answering questions about computerprograms, novices are better than expertsfor concrete questions, whereas experts arebetter than novices for abstract questions(Adelson, 1984).

In medical domains, after the presenta-tion of an endocarditic case, 4th and 6th yearmedical students recalled more propositionsabout the case than the internists (Schmidt& Boshuizen, 1993). Moreover, because theinternists’ biomedical knowledge was bet-ter consolidated with their clinical knowl-edge, resulting in “short cuts,” their expla-nations thus made few references to basicpathophysiological processes such as inflam-mation. In short, it is as if experts gloss overdetails that are the less relevant features of aproblem.

context-dependence within a domain

The first limitation of expertise stated aboveis that it is restricted to a specific domain.Moreover, within their domain of expertise,experts rely on contextual cues. For exam-ple, in a medical domain, experts seem torely on the tacit enabling conditions of a sit-uation for diagnosis (Feltovich & Barrows,1984). The enabling conditions are back-ground information such as age, sex, previ-ous diseases, occupation, drug use, and soforth. These circumstances are not necessar-ily causally related to diseases, but physicianspick up and use such correlational knowl-edge from clinical practice. When expertphysicians were presented the complaintsassociated with a case along with patientcharts and pictures of the patients, theywere 50% more accurate than the novices in



their diagnoses, and they were able to repro-duce a large amount of context informationthat was directly relevant to the patient’sproblem (Hobus, Schmidt, Boshuizen, &Patel, 1987). The implication is that withoutthe contextual enabling information, expertphysicians might be more limited in theirability to make an accurate diagnosis.

Experts’ skills have been shown to becontext-dependent in many other studies,such as the failure of experienced waitersto indicate the correct surface orientationof liquid in a tilted container, despite theirexperience in the context of wine glasses(Hecht & Proffitt, 1995), and the inaccura-cies of wildland fire fighters in predicting thespread of bush fire when the wind and slopeare opposing rather than congruent, which isan unusual situation (Lewandowsky, Dunn,Kirsner, & Randell, 1997).

inflexible

Although Hatano and Inagaki (1986) haveclaimed that exceptional (versus routine)experts are adaptive, sometimes experts dohave trouble adapting to changes in prob-lems that have a deep structure that devi-ates from those that are “acceptable” in thedomain. For example, Sternberg and Frensch(1992) found that expert bridge playerssuffered more than novice players whenthe game’s bidding procedure was changed.Similarly, expert tax accountants had moredifficulty than novice tax students in trans-ferring knowledge from a tax case that dis-qualified a general tax principle (Marchant,Robinson, Anderson, & Schadewald, 1991).Perhaps the experts in these studies are rou-tine experts; but they nevertheless showedless flexibility than the novices.

Inflexibility can be seen also in the useof strategies by Brazilian street vendors whocan be considered “experts” in “street math-ematics” (Schliemann & Carraher, 1993).When presented with a problem in a pric-ing context, such as “If 2 kg of rice cost 5

cruzeiros, how much do you have to payfor 3 kg?,” they used mathematical strate-gies with 90% accuracies. However, whenpresented with a problem in a recipe con-

text (“To make a cake with 2 cups of flouryou need 5 spoonfuls of water; how manyspoonfuls do you need for 3 cups of flour?”),they did not adapt their mathematical strate-gies. Instead, they used estimation strategies,resulting in only 20% accuracies.

inaccurate prediction, judgment, and advice

Another weakness of experts is that some-times they are inaccurate in their predictionof novice performance. For example, onewould expect experts to be able to extrapo-late from their own task-specific knowledgehow quickly or easily novices can accomplisha task. In general, the greater the expertisethe worse off they were at predicting howquickly novices can perform a task, such asusing a cell phone (Hinds, 1999). In tasksrequiring decision under uncertainty, suchas evaluating applicants for medical intern-ships (Johnson, 1988) or predicting successesin graduate school (Dawes, 1971), it has beenshown consistently that experts fail to makebetter judgments than novices. Such lackof superior decision making may be limitedto domains that involve predicting humanbehavior, such as parole decisions, psychi-atric judgment, and graduate school suc-cesses (Shanteau, 1984).

An alternative interpretation of experts’inaccuracies in making predictions is to pos-tulate that they cannot take the perspectivesof the novices accurately. Compatible withthis interpretation is the finding that stu-dents are far more able to incorporate feed-back from their peers than from their expertinstructor in a writing task (Cho, 2004).

bias and functional fixedness

Bias is probably one of the most serioushandicaps of experts, especially in the med-ical profession. Sometimes physicians arebiased by the probable survival or mor-tality rates of a treatment. Christensen,Heckerling, Mackesy, Berstein, and Elstein(1991) found that residents were more sus-ceptible to let the probable survival outcomedetermine options for treatment, whereasnovice students were not. Fortunately, expe-rienced physicians were not affected by



the mortality rates either. In another study,however, my colleagues and I found theexperienced physicians to manifest seri-ous biases. We presented several types ofcases to specialists, such as hematologists,cardiologists, and infectious disease spe-cialists. Some were hematology cases andothers were cardiology cases. We foundthat regardless of the type of specializedcase, specialists tended to generate hypothe-ses that corresponded to their field ofexpertise: Cardiologists tended to generatemore cardiology-type hypotheses, whetherthe case was one of a blood disease or aninfectious disease (Hashem, Chi, & Fried-man, 2003). This tendency to generate diag-noses about which they have more knowl-edge clearly can cause greater errors. More-over, experts seem to be more susceptibleto suggestions that can bias their choicesthan novices (Walther, Fiedler, & Nickel,2003).

Greater domain knowledge can also bedeleterious by creating mental set or func-tional fixedness. In a problem-solving con-text, there is some suggestion that the moreknowledgeable participants exhibit more fu-nctional fixedness in that they have moredifficulty coming up with creative solutions.For example, in a remote association task,three words are presented, such as plate, bro-ken, and rest, and the subject’s task is to comeup with a fourth word that can form a famil-iar phrase with each of the three words, suchas the word home for home plate (a baseballterm), broken home, and rest home. A “mis-leading” set of three words can be plate, bro-ken, and shot, in which the correct solution isglass. High baseball knowledge subjects wereless able than low baseball knowledge sub-jects to generate correct solutions to the mis-leading type of problems because the firstword plate primed their baseball knowledgeso that it caused functional fixedness (Wiley,1998).

In conclusion, the two sections aboveeach summarized seven ways in whichexperts excel and seven ways in which theyfall short. Although much more research hasbeen carried out focusing on ways in whichexperts’ greater knowledge allows them to

excel, it is equally important to know ways inwhich their knowledge is limiting. The facil-itations and limitations of knowledge canprovide boundary conditions for shaping atheory of expertise.

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Author Notes

The author is grateful for support providedby the Pittsburgh Science of Learning Center.Reprints may be requested from the authoror downloaded from the WEB, at www.pitt.edu/˜chi

Two Approaches to the Study of Experts’ Characteristics - Michelene T. H. Chi

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