Download How do experts and novices differ when confronted with identical

How do experts and novices differ when confronted with identical problems?
What attributes, skills, dispositions, goals and response dispositions
characterise the expert
NAME DELETED FROM THIS COPY
Abstract
In this project three people were asked to view a brief taped segment of classical
ballet. The duration of the segment was between two and three minutes. One
person referred to as the expert had thirty years of ballet performance or teaching
experience, the other two were considered novices. One novice, possessing ten
years of jazz ballet performance and tuition was considered a competent novice in
classical ballet, the other had no dance experience or tuition and is referred to as an
inexperienced novice.
The three subjects were asked to recall what they had seen on the video and also
asked to respond to ballet specific questions as well as questions peripheral to the
dance steps and sequences. In order to check that their recall was related to their
level of dance expertise rather than enhanced memory skills they were given a
second task of recalling words from two lists: a ballet word list and a list of random
every-day usage words.
It was found that the ballet expert recalled nearly six times more dance steps than
the competent novice and sixteen times more than the inexperienced novice in less
than half the time it took either of the others. Her verbal report highlighted domain
specific memory strategies during her recall of dance steps and sequences, but not
evident in her recall of the peripheral features.
It was also found that the expert’s superior recall for dance steps was not transferred
to other domains when she recalled a similar number of words from the random word
list as did the inexperienced novice.
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Introduction
According to the Oxford dictionary (1984), an expert is a person who is trained by
practice in having a special skill or knowledge.
Anderson (1995) and Gagne, Yekovich and Yekovich (1993) endorse this idea,
highlighting the notion that the special skill being practised belongs to a specific
domain and generally involves a good ten years practice. They refer to studies
which indicate that improvement in speed and accuracy within a domain tend to level
out after five years, which suggests that base level expertise in a domain can be
evident after five years of practice. (Anderson, 1995)
When comparing experts and novices or even people competent in a specific
domain but not having expertise, many features may be noted. These include the
factors that experts have:

More and better conceptual or functional understanding in the domain.

More and better automated basic skills pertaining to the domain.

More and better domain specific strategies.
(Gagne et al., 1993)
Gagne et al., (1993) explain that conceptual understanding resides in declarative
memory. It includes propositions, images, linear ordering or sequences as well as
complex, well-formed schemata, which represents an experts declarative knowledge.
It allows for quick recognition of meaningful patterns and for representation of
problems at a deep level. Basic skills and strategies rehearsed and practised by the
expert are lodged in ones procedural memory. Years of practice develop automatic
and effortless skills, which give the expert greater working memory resources for
problem solving. Similarly, possessing domain specific strategies provide experts
with more efficient and effective reasoning. (Gagne et al 1993)
Gagne, Yekovich and Yekovich (1993) cite Glaser and Chi (1988) when listing six
consistent differences generally found between domain specific experts and others.
These are found in the size of patterns perceived by experts, the size of their
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memory, their speed of skill execution, their depth of problem representation, the
time spent developing a problem representation and their degree of self-monitoring.
Anderson (1995) endorses the notion that experts rely on patterns which they have
‘chunked’ into expected groups within their memory. Consequently, they display
enhanced memory when confronted with a problem because they are not tackling
individual pieces or steps of the problem but whole patterns.
This ability to recognise and use chunks of information which relate and associate
items to each other, as in patterns, defines meaning for the expert and accounts for
his/her superior memory in a domain (Anderson 1995). Experts within a domain
seem to defy the limited capacity of working memory available for current mental
processes of connecting and integrating concepts. According to Anderson (1995)
they extend this advantage into long term memory, displaying an ability to not only
remember more patterns, as well as larger patterns, but also to recall more of them.
Yates and Chandler (2000) write that recognising information is to indicate that an
item or content is known; requiring more superficial processes and less output than
recall. To recall information means to produce, regurgitate and rebuild information,
which involves processing at a deeper level.
Processing at a deeper level engages the schemata that the expert has formed and
practised over the years. Gagne et al (1993) define schemas (or schemata) as high
order units of declarative knowledge, which not only operate at base level but may
involve many schemas being embedded in hierarchies and integrated with each
other. Once activated they “become the basis for comprehension, expectation,
inference and learning” (Yates & Chandler,1994 p2), and trigger procedural
knowledge for the development of both domain general and domain specific skills.
Anderson (1995) claims there are three stages of skill development that bear
distinction. These seem to be progressive. Firstly, there is the cognitive stage that
embeds the factors to be executed in the performance of a skill. Then there is the
associative stage that eliminates any errors and strengthens performance; thus,
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reducing the time for execution. Finally, there is the autonomous stage where the
procedure becomes smoother and faster, needing less attention to be paid, and
requiring fewer processing resources. All in all, one of the most prominent factors of
expertise in a specific domain is that of automation, which results in doing things so
effortlessly that we do not even think about it, while doing it; nor are we able to
articulate how we have done it. Automation also results in speedy, accurate
performance that produces the intended behaviour or action. (Gagne et al., 1993)
Because domain specific experts have a deep conceptual understanding of their field
of expertise, they are able to make accurate inferences and draw accurate
conclusions within their domain of knowledge. (Gagne et al 1993) This is highly
likely to account for the amount and effectiveness of their monitoring measures and
superior domain specific strategies.
This Empirical Project explores how an expert and two novices differ when
presented with identical problems. The paper will describe the behaviours and
observe the strategies used during cognitive processing. The three people were
asked to view a video clip in the domain of classical ballet and asked to report on
what they saw in the video clip. They were also asked to view and repeat back a list
of ballet related words, followed by a list of everyday words to repeat from memory.
The three people included in the project varied considerably in their degree of dance
knowledge. One was an expert who had thirty years of dance experience. Between
the ages of 9 years and 19 years she had ballet performance experience; thereafter
having 23 years of ballet teaching experience. The second person in the empirical
study had 10 years of contemporary dance tuition and performance experience. She
had classical ballet tuition for one year only at the age of 7 years. She is classified
as a competent novice. The third person has no experience in ballet; its language or
style, nor any tuition or performance. He is classified as an inexperienced novice.
The aim of this paper is to demonstrate that a person with an extensive background
in classical ballet will remember and verbally report more features from a, brief
segment of a ballet tape, than a person who has a moderate experience in dance
performance; not necessarily classical ballet. Also to demonstrate that they both will
report more than a person who has no experience in any type of dance production.
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The second aim of the project is to ascertain if the person with a classical ballet
background has the same recall ability when presented with a task outside her
domain specific area of expertise.
Method: Aim 1
Each of the three people, at different times, was shown a two minute, twenty second
segment of the ballet, “Giselle”, performed by The Australian Ballet Company. On
the stage were some of the twelve corps de ballet plus eight soloists and the two
principal dancers. The dance segment observed was performed by the principal
female. It was a solo performance. (Description of ballet segment is attached as
Appendix 1A)
Prior to the tape being played the subjects were given a short paragraph to read
containing contextual information about the storyline contained within the dance.
“Free recall” method was used, as referred to by Gagne, Yekovich and Yekovich
(1993). To report the interviews an audio tape recorder was used both during the
subjects viewing of the tape and while they were recalling their responses.
Using open ended questions they were asked to specify what they saw in the taped
segment including the types of steps and sequence of dance.
The following questions were used to elicit responses.
1. How many ‘cross stage’ presentations did the ballerina do?
2. After her preparation, what is her first major step?
3. She does a few pirouettes from each side with changes early in her presentation,
finishing each one with an arabesque. Can you recall how many turns she does
with each pirouette/arabesque step? Are they single turns or multiple?
4. When she does her middle (or second of three) cross stage presentations, do
you know or can you describe the steps she does?
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5. When she returns for her final cross stage presentation, do you recall what steps
she presents?
6. Can you estimate how many pirouettes and turns she does in that final
presentation?
In addition, the following questions were used to assess the extent to which the
participants remembered information on the film that was peripheral to the dance.
1. What was the principal male dancer doing during the female soloist’s dance?
2. What was the mother character doing during the dance?
3. How many other dancers were on stage, and in what posture?
4. What were the colours worn by the other female dancers?
5. Were there any props or building structures on stage, if so, what were they?
They were asked what processes they used to recall and nominate particular dance
sequences.
(Transcripts of each of the three interviews are attached as Appendices 2,3 and 4).
Method: Aim 2
Each of the three subjects was asked to look at a list of ballet word for a period of
one minute and then asked to recall as many of the words that they could.
Each of the three subjects was asked to look at a list of random everyday usage
words for a period of one minute and then asked to recall as many of the words that
they could.
Results: Aim 1
None of the subjects spoke during their viewing of the ballet video clip. When asked
to respond to the question of what they saw, the expert’s response time was one
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second, the competent novice took seven seconds before any utterance and the
inexperienced novice took twelve seconds to begin uttering his response.
The expert uttered approximately 1,450 words to respond to both open ended and
specific questions related to the ballet recall task, while the competent novice uttered
approximately 455 words and the inexperienced novice uttered approximately 300
words. The competent novice also used physical demonstration on two occasions,
the inexperienced novice resorted to finger gesture twice. The expert used domain
specific ballet language.
Frequency of ballet language (or ballet jargon) was also measured. The expert used
ballet specific language in fifty-one instances, the competent novice attempted six
instances, while the inexperienced novice did not attempt to use any ballet specific
words. However, he did acknowledge recognition of one ballet specific word,
Pirouette, after the interviewer referred to it.
The expert accurately recalled seventeen aspects related to the six dance specific
questions. The competent novice accurately recalled three, while the inexperienced
novice accurately recalled one step when responding to the six dance specific
questions.
Conversely, the expert recalled one aspect of the peripheral questions, but it was not
entirely accurate. The competent novice accurately recalled four of the six
peripheral incidences when questioned, and the inexperienced novice accurately
recalled four of the six incidences when questioned. He also included an additional
peripheral feature not asked of him.
Each of the subjects was asked to evaluate the level of difficulty of the dance
performance. They were given a scale of 1 to 3. The expert said it was not difficult
and gave it a scale of 1. The competent novice said it was not particularly difficult
and gave it a scale of 2. The inexperienced novice said it would be difficult and gave
it a scale of 3, ie very difficult.
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Each of the subjects was asked to estimate the time length of the two minute, twenty
second video clip. The expert estimated somewhere between six and three minutes,
settling on three and a half minutes. The competent novice estimated two minutes,
while the inexperienced novice estimated between two and two and a half minutes.
The total recall time of the task took the expert 13 minutes, the competent novice 8
minutes and the inexperienced novice 7 minutes.
Results: Aim 2
When asked to recall the fifteen words on the ballet specific word list, the ballet
expert successfully recalled twelve; the competent novice successfully recalled ten;
the inexperienced novice recalled four.
When asked to recall the fifteen words on the random, everyday word list, the ballet
expert successfully recalled seven; the competent novice successfully recalled
fourteen and the inexperienced novice successfully recalled six of the fifteen words.
Discussion
Gagne Yekovich and Yekovich (1993) state that the method of ‘free recall’ is a valid
measure of information processing as it is indicative of an individual’s memory
structure. It effectively demonstrates the level of conceptual understanding.
The subjects participating in this study showed varying degrees of conceptual
understanding in the domain of ballet. They all agreed willingly to be part of the
study. The expert and competent novice were most alert and very responsive. The
inexperienced novice appeared eager to respond to the open ended questions and
to the peripheral questions but seemed a little ill at ease during the ballet specific
questions. He repeatedly shook his head, gave short clipped answers, such as
“No”, or “I wouldn’t have a clue” or “I don’t know anything about ballet”
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The interviewer would infer that this was his way of indicating a lack of conceptual
understanding with very little schemata to activate. Yates and Chandler (2000),
Gagne , Yekovich and Yekovich (1993) and Anderson(1995) endorse the notion that
meaningfulness determines the level of retention. Ballet has not been part of this
subject’s life and holds very little meaning for him. This factor, coupled with a lack of
interest in dance resulting in a paucity of depth of knowledge representation, or
schemata, would surely contribute to his inability to retain most of the steps that he
saw. The step that did trigger his interest, he managed to retain,
“There is only one that stuck out and that was the one that she actually came
back on one toe all the way. She came from right to left on one foot. She
came bouncing all the way on one foot”.
Conversely, the expert had an extensive understanding in the domain of ballet and
was able to draw from a very deep well of knowledge representation (schemata).
She was highly motivated and impassioned. When viewing the ballet word list she
said “These words are very dear to me, they are words I use all the time”.
Consequently, the whole task of viewing the ballet tape was a meaningful exercise
and she managed to retain an extraordinary number of the specific dance steps with
intricate detail. For example,
“(She) shouldn’t come down off (her) pointe half a beat too soon and wait for
the next beat to get back up there again. (She) shouldn’t come off full pointe
before actually completing the full turn. Her spotting was a little funny on the
other side too.”
Later the expert recalled the detail of turns.
“What she did was start off with a pose into a double turn, followed by another
single, or something, and that was one lot of three. Then she repeated it; I
think she repeated it four times…Then she did some petit tours at the end.”
Throughout the interview the expert demonstrated that she was delving into her well
of knowledge from both declarative knowledge and procedural knowledge aspects.
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She was constantly checking the stimulus of what she saw with her own schemata,
encoding it, and talking about the discrepancies; which she presented as judgements
about the quality of dance. Her immediate response to the video clip exemplifies the
encoded discrepancies. When she hears the audience applauding the ballerina’s
performance, the expert judged that it was not worthy of such reward.
“I saw an appreciative audience; probably not aware of the mistakes that
she was making. But, I guess that’s theatre. They come for spectacle.
I saw a dancer who wasn’t particularly very good, nor very strong. She
kept good time, but I would say her upper body let her down. She could
have done so much better if she had a stronger upper body. I saw some
very good corps de ballet theatre in the background. They seemed to
be fully in tune with the acting part.
But unfortunately, I often go to the ballet and look at it through a ballet
teacher’s eyes, rather than enjoying it. I didn’t particularly enjoy what I
saw. Whereas it always fascinates me that the audience can think that it
is absolutely wonderful because she can dance on her toes (laughs).
But in actual fact she wasn’t dancing very well on her toes at all.
Whether that was just a one off bad day or she wasn’t a strong dancer, I
am not sure.”
The expert repeatedly monitored what she saw against her own knowledge bank, eg
“I saw some relatively nice ports de bras work, some not very strong landing.
As far as her movements to get up on to full pointe, I would say was relatively
effortless; but after that her delivery was quite poor. I didn’t see a lot of
perfected position work, for example, on her landings. That is me being a
technician. But it glares at you if somebody comes down a half a beat too
soon when they are supposed to be pulled up in their retire position for that
half second longer. That was poor.”
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The competent novice had a reasonable well of general dance knowledge from
which to draw, but her responses indicated that her dance knowledge was in the
procedural domain rather than the declarative area of knowing the name of dance
steps or sequences. She physically demonstrated some of her responses. Her
responses indicated that her schemata did not include the rigid discipline of
executing precise ballet steps, but that movement and dance had the job of
expressing a story.
“Do you just want to tell me what you remember seeing, including any steps
that you recognise?”
“OK, to me they look like they were having an open party in the forest in the
woods. It opened with her being the most popular of the peasant girls. To me
it looked like she was still in her peasant girl attire. (Subject adds quickly)
Which she always was. But then he entered and I think he entered as
someone on her level; as a peasant as well. Then he asked her to dance for
him, or gestured for her to dance or maybe to come with him. Then she
asked her mother if that was OK. It sort of looked like she wanted to dance
with him and she liked him, but then she kept looking back to her mother as
well.”
“What, while she was dancing? Or before she started dancing?”
“No, while she was dancing. This was all in the dance. It looked like she was
being coy with him almost. Like she was teasing him. She was dancing for
him but kept on moving in another direction towards her mother”.
The expert’s entire recall demonstrated her abilities in perceiving large meaningful
patterns (Gagne, Yekovich and Yekovich 1993) eg
“Well, if you break it down there were four groups of 3 lots of different
pirouettes. I mean she did a double turn, which would be classified as one
and she did a pose followed by the same routine probably three times”.
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Although the competent novice was able to remember and demonstrate certain
steps, they were only parts of step sequences, eg
“No, no not the pirouette. She, oh, I don’t know. I just remember
where she sort of went (demonstration of ren verse pirouette) Her
hand sort of went up like that and she went down like that.”
“Well anyway, the next question that I have set is that she does a
few of those pirouettes that you are talking about from side to side.
Where she does a turn and sinks into an arabesque. They finish in
an arabesque. Can you remember how many turns she did to go
into that arabesque? Was it just one, or did she do a few? Can
you remember?”
“No.”
The inexperienced novice had a limited recall of perceived patterns, eg when asked
if he noticed that the ballerina danced across stage he replied
“Yes, across stage both ways, most of it on her toes.”
However most questions requiring pattern perception in the domain of ballet he
answered with “No”.
The expert displayed superior short and long term memory, which Gagne et al
(1993) explains as the ability to initially chunk information before using those bits, in
order to organise the information into larger groups; thus retrieving more information
overall. For example, the expert responded to the task of recalling seen information
in 1,450 words; the competent novice responded in 455 words; and the
inexperienced novice responded in 300 words.
Well entrenched into the expert’s schemata was ballet terminology, with which
neither of the novices was equipped. Hence, the expert had a tool for greater
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elaboration. The competent novice attempted to use ballet language, but did so
inaccurately. The inexperienced novice did not attempt to use ballet terminology,
although acknowledged recognition of the word pirouette.
Although the expert provided greater than three times more information than the
competent novice, and greater than four times more information than the
inexperienced novice, she took less than twice the time to recall what she had seen.
The novices both took 7 and 8 minutes and the expert took 13 minutes,
demonstrating that experts perform smoother and faster tasks, requiring fewer
processing resources, as well as using more efficient encoding strategies and more
efficient retrieval strategies. (Gagne et al 1993). These quick, efficient and effortless
processes are part of the expert’s level of automation. A “downside” of automation is
that experts are generally unable to articulate how they have executed the task.
(Gagne et al 1993) When asked how each of the subjects recalled the task of
describing what they saw, they each responded thus:The expert said “I take pictures. I see something that I like and I tend to take a
photograph of it. I think I have always been a visual learner. I tend to fix a slide
projector in there and freeze it.”
The inexperienced novice said, “Oh, you try and go through it…….yes, visualising to
an extent”.
In contrast, the competent novice relied on semantic meaning (Ericsson 1985, in
Valentine and Wilding 1994); evidenced when she said, “I saw it as a story rather
than dancing. I tried to interpret her dancing as a story and gestures rather than
trying to remember technical movements”.
Unwittingly, the expert also testified to encoding the information and monitoring it
against her own extensive schemata, when she said
“Not that I am aware of. I don’t know; I am a bit weird with things like that. I
tend to visualise a lot in pictures. And my recall is…(pause), for example, if
she has made a mistake, I tend to set more of a fixation on that than recalling
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the things she has done right. Which is human nature, I suppose. It’s just
that when I have sat in an audience after audience and produced or
choreographed things of my own, I know how things are supposed to look.
Then when they don’t look like that, it glares at me.”
Gagne et al (1993) claim that having well entrenched schemas can be misleading.
They not only integrate propositions, images and linear ordering to reduce the load
on the working memory, but they are designed for making inferences. As a result
they have a ‘default value’, which affords one to make assumptions according to
expectations; be they accurate or not. The inexperienced novice made a personally
related assumption that the ballet was difficult. The competent novice inferred from
her romance related schemas that the character, Giselle, liked the prince and was
teasing him. Rather than encoding that the dancer was doing typical cross stage
dance patterns, causing her to move away from him. The expert made several
assumptions. Based on her ballet specific procedural knowledge she suspected that
the ballerina ran out of room on the stage and changed the ending of one of her
sequences. Based on her schema of corps de ballet acting roles, she assumed that
the prince character was “reclining with his legs stretched out in front of him” when
he was not. He was sitting on a bench, with his legs tucked under.
In fact, unlike the novices the expert answered incorrectly most of the questions
peripheral to the dance. She thought there were only eight or ten corps de ballet
dancers on stage instead of twenty two. She had little recollection of the props. She
said the other dancers’ costumes were mauve instead orange, red and brown. She
estimated that the time span of the video clip was three and a half minutes after she
checked her schemata to monitor how many dance sequences were needed to fill
her original response of six minutes.
From these observations the interviewer believes that the expert was experiencing a
phenomenon described by Csikszentmihalyi (1999) as the ‘autotelic experience’ or
‘flow’. Whereby the experience is so engrossing and enjoyable that it results in
having no consequence outside itself. He says that those effected by it focus
attention on a set of stimuli with their own rules, finding the activity so demanding
that no surplus attention is left to monitor any irrelevant stimuli.
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The results of the second goal of this project establish that the expert chosen for this
research is an expert in the domain specific skill of classical ballet only. She
successfully recalled twelve of the fifteen words on the list in her area of expertise.
However, she recalled only seven words from the random word list; just one more
that the inexperienced novice. Hence, she was not demonstrating an overall
superior memory, nor well rehearsed memory skill strategies. That domain seemed
reserved for the competent novice, who recalled ten of the ballet specific words and
fourteen of the fifteen random words. When asked what technique she used to recall
the random words she described the ‘mnemonic’ strategy of ‘semanticization’
(Ericsson 1985, Ericsson and Faivre,1988).
“Not the top two. The first sequence I started with was the “battery hen” and
the next few. I visualised a battery hen using utensils to walk, and he was
wearing glasses frames. Everyone thought he was a healthy chicken. And
then I thought “oh well, if I can do that, I can say, clothes that are brightly
coloured can stretch”. Then I tried to make a story with the bottom ones by
saying oily toads but I couldn’t do it.”
As for the ballet specific words, this technique would not have helped because they
were generally unfamiliar to her and in a foreign language.
Maybe the next gaol of the observer should be to research the memory strategies of
the competent novice subject in another domain!!
References
Anderson, J.R., (1995) Cognitive Psychology and its Implications (4th Ed), Freeman
and Company, USA
Australian Pocket Oxford Dictionary (1984) (2nd Ed) Edited by George W. Turner,
Oxford University Press, Melbourne
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Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1999) ‘If We Are So Rich, Why Aren’t We Happy” In American
Psychologist October 1999, Vol. 54 no. 10 821-827
Ericsson, Ericsson and Faive (1988) In E. Valentine, J. Wilding ‘Memory Expertise’
The Psychologist September 1994
Gagne, E. Yekovich, C., Yekovich, F. (1993) The Cognitive Psychology of School
Learning (2nd Ed) Addison, Wesley, Longman, USA
Glasser & Chi (1988) In E. Gagne, C. Yekovich, F. Yekovich (1993) The Cognitive
Psychology of School Learning (2nd Ed) Addison, Wesley, Longman, USA
The Australian Ballet (video recording) (1993) Giselle ABC video, Australia
Yates, G. Chandler, M.,(2000) ‘Principles of memory retention’ Study Guide
University of South Australia p20
Yates, G, Chandler, M. (1994) ‘Prior knowledge and how it influences classroom
learning: What does the research tell us? Set: Research information for
teachers, Issue 2 Item 6
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